


A Foolish Undertaking

by TehRaincoat



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Family Drama, Gen, Kidnapping
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-13
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2019-05-06 05:17:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 25,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14634891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TehRaincoat/pseuds/TehRaincoat
Summary: When Zuko and Iroh arrive in the Fire Nation, and Azula's true intentions become apparent, Iroh will do anything to keep his nephew and himself from prison. Including this.An alternate universe imagining of what might have happened if the soldier on the boat had not made the mistake of calling Iroh and Zuko prisoners at the beginning of Book Two.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for stopping by! :D The first chapter was done as a response to a "What-if" prompt on my Tumblr rp account for Azula:
> 
> "What if the guard hadn’t screwed up and Azula was able to get Iroh and Zuko back to the Fire Nation?"
> 
> The result was popular enough that I've expanded on it at several readers' requests. So please enjoy! :D

Iroh

 

He’d known it the second that they walked onto the ship and set sail from the Earth Kingdom back toward the Fire Nation, but Iroh has always been one to hope for the best. Now that the worst has happened; now that he knows that it’s all been a trap, that they are to be prisoners, he sets his plan into action.

Of anything that his niece might expect, Iroh supposes this is likely at the bottom of her list. Perhaps that is why it’s so easy to lay his hands on her. Perhaps that is why she seems genuinely shocked and confused as he pulls her tight against himself and sets the blade of his hand aflame, a threat and a warning to the soldiers who have surrounded them.

At his back, Zuko’s breathing is laboured, panicked. He merely hopes that his nephew can keep it together long enough for them to get back on the boat and commandeer it. It’s the only way they’re getting out of this now.

Even this plan is a bad one. Iroh doesn’t assume that they’ll get far, but perhaps having Azula as a captive will be enough to  _stall_  his brother. The younger man does not love much, but Iroh suspects that, in his way, he does love his daughter.

He at least loves what she represents. Taking her will make him angry, but it will also force his hand toward caution.

The real trick, Iroh knows, is keeping her contained.

“Do you trust me, Zuko?”

“What — ? Of course Uncle…”

“Then do exactly as I say.”

“You two won’t get away with this,” Azula growls, all teeth. There’s always been something a little feral about the girl hidden beneath her polished façade, and it rears its head at him as she realises the situation she’s unwittingly walked herself into.

She’d been too confident in her victory. Her fatal flaw.

“Perhaps now would be a good time to keep your thoughts to yourself, Princess Azula.”

“Uncle?” Zuko’s palpable panic brings Iroh back to the task at hand.

“You will go to the navigation deck and take control of the ship, taking out the remaining soldiers as you go,” Iroh tells Zuko patiently. “First, however, you will detach the boarding plank from the dock once I have come up onto the deck with your sister. I will deal with those left on the deck.”

“Okay…” Zuko still sounds panicked, but there is control there. He is coming around from his shock, and Iroh is thankful that it has not taken him all that long.

He is crushingly used to having his expectations disappointed. Iroh will try to do better for him.

In the mean time he keeps his vice grip on Azula, ready for resistance, and edges them all up onto the deck of the ship. He gives a fierce look to the men who have come to defend their princess, his own teeth bared.

“You will all jump overboard,” he commands them harshly, “or you will watch as I permanently damage the heir to the throne. Do I make myself entirely clear?”

These are all men who would have jumped to say that they admired Iroh. The men that held him in great esteem for his feats in his youth. They are also the men who agreed to bring him and his nephew back to the Fire Nation to be wrongfully imprisoned by Ozai. Iroh has no love for them, though he does feel the smallest twinge of sympathy for their position.

Better men would have opposed the idea.

“Do not listen to him,” Azula orders then, voice like steel. She sounds like a commander, and she’s only fourteen. She’s only a girl. His heart clenches at the idea. “You will follow your orders and relay him and the disgraced prince to their jail cells, there to await trial for this newest form of treason!”

“Think more deeply about this, Princess Azula,” Iroh suggests, dragging her to the center of the ship’s deck, “you are your father’s only heir. If you die where would that leave him?”

“He’s young.”

“That’s oddly self sacrificing of you.”

“I’ve always been this self sacrificing.”

“Somehow I doubt that that is the case.”

“What would you know?”

The soldiers still hesitate, and Iroh waits, trying not to hold his breath, anticipating anything.

One by one, they turn and climb to the rail of the ship, jumping overboard.

The boat jerks beneath them. Iroh looks up, sees his nephew through the viewport. They pull away from the shore and Iroh waits with Azula in hand, narrowing his eyes as they slowly leave the Fire Nation main port behind.

“You’re going to regret this, uncle.”

“Perhaps.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It seems uncharacteristically cruel of her uncle, but then again, he was a feared and respected general, at one time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think this is the fastest I've ever turned out a new chapter for anything. Huzzah!? Thank you again for reading! :D

II 

 

Azula

 

It’s been ten days since the dock. Ten days that father’s men have not caught up to them. Ten days that Azula has waited in this dingy cell for someone to come who isn’t her uncle or her brother. Ten days since she was so humiliatingly captured and dragged below decks by her father’s fat, old, disgraced brother and left here to rot in the damp.

Her head ticks back, resting uncomfortably against the metal wall of the cell, her breath heating her with every exhale from deep within her core. She’s been chained upright, her hands and feet bound at her back on short tethers. It’s impossible to change position with ease, let alone to lie down. She’s taken to sleeping in a kneeling position, and hasn’t really felt her feet in a number of days. 

It seems uncharacteristically cruel of her uncle, but then again, he was a feared and respected general, at one time. There has to be something there that Azula has never had the occasion to see. Something that merits the nervous feeling she would get in her childhood whenever he was around and she was not immediately able to see her father nearby. Now she resents that she has not taken him a little more seriously.

She’s always seen him as a threat, of course. He’s renown for his bending, though it’s rare to see him in action, and though he has grown soft and non threatening in his old age, she’s not usually so foolish as to underestimate anyone.

But she has underestimated him. 

The sickening feeling in the pit of her stomach roils again, accompanied shortly by a panging growl of hunger. Azula swallows convulsively, and feels the heat of ire beginning to build again the longer she dwells on her situation. 

Her current predicament is unacceptable. She will remedy it…It’s just a matter of when and how. 

She’s turned her mind to it many times, rolling her situation over and over in her head to view from all angles. There are endless hours with which to do this, between the visits of her brother and uncle. 

This is what she knows:

On the boat she is powerless. Even if she manages to escape, jumping overboard and swimming isn’t the best plan. She’ll tire, and maybe drown, if they’re far enough out from land. Stealing a boat will perhaps be difficult too, since one of them is always watching…Even if the ship is meant to be manned by thirty men and not two. Their routine check ins make it difficult for her to do anything to better her situation. 

Rowing, too, unless she can take both Zuko and her uncle out, will be a useless endeavour once they’ve discovered she’s gone. They’ll turn the ship’s engines to their good use and catch up to her in no time. It won’t be difficult to find her on open water. 

And Azula assumes they’re on open water and not by the coast, to avoid her father’s ships.

Azula briefly considers endearing herself to her uncle. Not for the first time. He offers wisdom like a two-copper-piece fortune teller. Making him feel like a big man would not be so difficult. A gradual change in her demeanour, a softening up as she takes his lessons to heart…It may earn her a ticket out of this cell and back to her quarters on the ship. 

It would be preferable, to be locked up there instead of here. She has provisions in her rooms that she does not have in the brig. She really could make a plan that would serve her from there. 

Plus, she might not be tied directly to a wall in her personal quarters, and endeared to her uncle. 

It’s simply about learning how to trick him the way she can so easily trick Zuzu. 

At her back Azula’s hands twitch, barely noticeable. They’ve gone numb too, from the cuffs that chaff at her wrists. 

The princess looks up at the porthole which sits high in the wall of her cell, streaming light in from the outside. Judging by its position, she will see one of them soon. Maybe if it’s Zuko she can burn the other side of his face off when he is least expecting it. The thought curls her lips into a smile. 

As if on cue the door at the end of the long hallway groans as it opens, and heavy footfalls approach. They’re not staccato, as Zuko’s tend to be, but measured and calm. it’s Iroh then. Her previous glee at her malevolent plan diminishes, and Azula scowls at the blank wall as she waits. 

His footfalls shuffle to a stop at her door, and he knocks, as though these were her private quarters and he is about to intrude on her within them. Not for the first time she rolls her eyes venomously and waits for his voice.

“Princess Azula? May I come in?”

It’s a ridiculous ruse, trying to make her feel comfortable; as though she has any control over the situation. It’s just as sentimental as she has come to expect, and Azula’s mouth presses into a thin line, expression sour. 

After making him wait what she believes to be sufficient time to inconvenience the old clown, she answers: 

“Enter.” 

A key jingles. The lock clicks. Iroh enters the dim light of the cell with a platter of food in hand and closes the door behind him. He shuffles forward in the gloom, settling himself opposite her with a grunt of effort for the kneeling, a pleasant expression painted onto his weathered features. 

“You are looking well today,” he greets cheerfully. 

Azula says nothing, waiting for him to continue passed his fake pleasantries and to whatever it is he’s come here to discuss aside from feeding her the noon time meal. 

“I have good news,” he continues when it is finally obvious to him that she will not be responding. He carefully removes the lids from each of the dishes that he has brought to her. “I found some roast duck that hadn’t gone off yet. It’s my personal favourite, and I thought that perhaps it would be a nice treat for you.”

In addition to the meat, Iroh uncovers fresh rice and some picked vegetables. Azula surveys them down the length of her nose before she fixes her uncle with the same, defiant, expression that she has given him every meal time since the first day on board this ship as his captive and not as its commander. 

“I wish to feed myself.”

“Princess Azula, we have been over this many times already. Until you are no longer angry, I cannot release you from your bonds and allow you the luxury of the use of your hands. That would only be foolish and short sighted of me.”

Azula huffs defiantly, steam escaping from her nose in her annoyance. Iroh remains placid, waiting. 

“How much longer do you imagine you will be able to get away with this? Father will have sent a fleet after you. A fleet of far faster ships than this one.” It’s the same thing that she’s said to him every time that he comes to see her. Azula knows that it’s getting her nowhere. He does not fear her father’s wrath the way that she does. It’s something she finds continuously perplexing. 

Perhaps it comes with the territory of being siblings. There are plenty who fear Zuko’s temper, but Azula has never been one of them…

“As I have said many times before,” he answers easily, “you are far too modest about your own accommodations. This ship _is_ the fastest in the fleet, and as long as we do not drop anchor for an extended period of time, your father’s ships will never catch up with us. Even if they did, your brother has been improving his evasive naval manoeuvres greatly. I am confident he could lose them in no time at all.”

He puts a lot more faith in Zuko than anyone really should, Azula reflects, eyelids drooping and her eyebrows rising high on her forehead at the concept. 

Iroh plucks some rice and duck up with the chopsticks he’s brought with him, daintily offering them out to her. Azula stares at them for a moment before finally opening her mouth wide, accepting the offered sustenance. If it weren’t for the fact that she is starving, she might have forced him to wait longer for the slight. 

Unfortunately she is. 

After the silence stretches between them to an unbearable extent, and her belly has been filled, Azula finally turns her face away. 

“That’s enough.”

Iroh sets the food down, folding his hands in his lap patiently. 

Azula sighs out sharply, dragging her gaze back to the old man’s face when the silence continues and he does not stand to leave. 

“Please speak your mind, Uncle,” she invites snidely. 

“Thank you.” He reaches for the small pot of tea he’s brought with him, pouring two cups full of the stuff. He offers up her cup before he says more, and with another roll of her eyes Azula nods, allowing herself to be fed the now embittered tea. At least it’s still warm. She guesses that he would never allow anyone to drink cold tea that was not meant to be cold, however. Not even a prisoner.

“You have been down here for a long time,” he says then, “it must get lonely. It must be boring for you, though I suppose it gives you a lot of time to think. Maybe that is not so good for Zuko and me.” Iroh chuckles. 

Azula takes another sip of the tea, waiting for him to continue with whatever he’s been waiting to talk to her about. Obviously there is something on his mind, nagging at him to get out. 

“I know you are a loyal soldier to your father,” his voice is lower, more intimate now than she’s ever experienced. He’s good, she thinks. He’s a natural when it comes to chumming up to his enemies. He’s doing so now. “It is commendable. And, I don’t think I’ve ever seen another fourteen-year-old, let alone a young _lady_ , who can command a room full of grown men the way that you can, my young niece.” 

Azula’s lips press together stiffly, jutting forward as he speaks. Despite herself, her face has flushed, if only a little. It’s not as though many who are close to her bother to take notice. _This is all a part of his ploy_ , she reminds herself sharply. Azula let’s her eyes soften, however, looking down as Iroh puts away the cup of tea that he’s fed her from, taking up his own with a shake of his loose sleeves to free his hands once again. 

Azula clears her throat, and swallows her pride.

“Thank you, uncle.”

He pauses in the motion of bringing the cup to his lips, the golden liquid within sloshing against the bone-white side of the china. He’s surprised by her. This will only be the first of many surprises to come, she promises herself. Two can play at the enemies to friends game. 

Besides, her uncle’s estimation of her ship’s capabilities is not wrong. She will have to find some way other than relying upon her father’s men to catch up with them to escape. 

“You are welcome…I know that you are angry with me,” he says then, cupping his tea between his palms. His shoulders sag as though this troubles him. Azula keeps her expression neutral, “I also know that you are aware of the fact that I only did what was necessary to keep myself and your brother safe. Just like you only did what you saw as necessary to bring us back to the Fire Nation as your father had ordered. No matter what your personal feelings might be.”

He presumes a little too much about her personal feelings. Or he wants her to believe that he thinks her better than what she allows herself to be. Either way she has to fight back the urge to let her lips curl. 

“Well…both of us are merely his humble servants, wouldn’t you agree, uncle?” The words slither from her mouth.

“Mm…In other circumstances, yes…I have tried to do right by your father’s authority. His policies and the way that he has continued on with this war however, I cannot agree with. The day that he burned your brother despite his obvious contriteness was the day that I stopped humbly serving your father’s interests.”

“Oh really?” She manages to sound bored. “Here I was assuming that you’d always just been waiting for an excuse to turn on him for taking the throne out from under you.”

“Think what you will about that,” Iroh answers, “I keep my own council on those matters.” Truly, he gives nothing away in his face, or his breathing. Not even in the way that he holds himself where he sits with his tea. He seems contented with his choice. She cannot even imagine such a thing. 

Azula wonders, not for the first time, if her Uncle is actually just as good a liar as she is.

“What do you want with me, Uncle,” she asks finally, tired of the song and dance. Perhaps at another date she might have had the patience for it, but she is tired and sore, and will not be able to move at all still when he is gone, and she will be forced to wait and bide her time and cow tow to her uncle until she can finally convince him to loosen the reigns. There is the possibility of a long and winding road ahead of her.

“My only wish at this time is to extend the hand of friendship to you.”

“Surely you cannot think that I would believe that?”

He grunts, a low chuckle, as though he were amused with himself.

“It was worth a try this time. You are not ready for that yet,” he observes, gathering together the tray he’d brought with him. The plates tinkle softly against one another as he rises with them, grunting. “Perhaps a few more days in this cell will change your mind.”

“So you expect that you’ll evade the Fire Nation for another few _days,_ do you?” She tries to sound nonchalant about it, but in her gut Azula feels a twist of disappointment, though she had already suspected as much.

“I do expect so, yes,” he answers with a pleasant smile. Iroh bows his head slightly at her, and Azula leans heavily, letting the chains hold her upright for a few moments as she levies her weight against them.

“Do you require anything else before I leave you?”

“No. I’ll piss my pants when I need to use the facilities,” she responds curtly. Azula hopes to shock, but it doesn’t seem to work. 

“Well, that will only be uncomfortable for you so…Do as you please.” There’s a cheerfulness in his voice again, a great grin, and her uncle turns from her and exits the cell once more. Silence settles in his wake.

Once again the gears in Azula’s mind begin to spin. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He does not know what he thinks his niece deserves. Certainly in many ways her life has been made far easier by their father than Zuko’s has, and yet…He still feels a chill at the thought of her calm, steely, demeanour when they had faced down the crew and he had forced them all to abandon ship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What's up party people? Have chapter three!!! 
> 
> Thanks again for reading :D

III

 

Iroh

 

The wind on deck is brisk, the waters chilly even this close to the Fire Nation at the earliest turn from winter to spring. Iroh shrugs his fur lined cloak a little higher on his shoulders, and breathes fire through his teeth as he crosses the deck toward the central structure of the ship. 

His niece’s relative calm in the brig has left him contemplative, wondering not for the first time whether they leave her alone for too long and too often down there.

There’s little other choice, he knows. This ship will not run itself, and there are only the two of them to do it with. Azula with time to think is an Azula he does not like to contend with, however. 

She’s dangerous enough already. 

Still, having both of his brother’s heirs with him has put Iroh at an advantage, and he is sorely unused to having the upper hand these days. His waiting has paid off well, though he will readily admit that he has thought this particular part through very little. Kidnapping his niece had not been a part of the plan. 

Making contact with those members of the White Lotus who hide in plain sight in the Earth Kingdom is the next best course of action. He and Zuko cannot tote Azula around indefinitely. Eventually she will find the right opportunity and escape, and that will put them right back where they started, and Iroh will lose his advantage…No…It will be best to deal with her sooner than later, and dealing with her means finding a place to stash her that no one knows about until this all blows over…

Or until he can find a true purpose for her in the long game. 

Iroh enters the main structure of the ship, looking up at the flight of stairs leading toward the observation deck and his nephew at the helm. Sighing, he mounts them with an air of resignation, making the long journey upward. 

Zuko turns when he enters the observation deck, but Iroh continues forward without a greeting. He doesn’t need to offer one.

“You saw Azula?” His nephew’s voice is not hopeful, more curious. But only vaguely. 

The old man doesn’t nod, but instead moves to set down the platter of empty bowls which he’d brought to the girl below deck. Zuko already knows the answer to his own question. Finally Iroh responds:

“Yes.”

There’s another long silence, and Iroh does not bother to elaborate. Zuko will get to his question eventually. All one really needs to do is wait for the boy to lose his patience. And he does.

“And?”

“She is still nursing a wounded ego,” he answers him simply. Iroh turns toward his nephew, gaze catching on the expanse of the horizon before them through the windows before settling once again on the banished prince. 

He probably isn’t even that anymore, close as they had both been to prison. Zuko is an unmoored boy on the cusp of his manhood, feeling utterly alone. Iroh’s heart aches.

“Yeah well,” Zuko turns back to the view himself, hand steady on the wheel, “she needed to be taken down a peg or two anyway. It’ll probably do her some good.”

Iroh sighs again, weary. 

He does not know what he thinks his niece deserves. Certainly in many ways her life has been made far easier by their father than Zuko’s has, and yet…He still feels a chill at the thought of her calm, steely, demeanour when they had faced down the crew and he had forced them all to abandon ship. She was ready to die, and she is only a child. It reminds him of Lu Ten, but even his beloved son would have felt some trepidation at the prospect, he thinks, had he been in a similar situation.

Azula had met it with cool resolve. Hardly the reaction of a child. 

Even Zuko had begged for his life at thirteen. 

“What,” the boy asks sullenly. He can sense Iroh’s disappointment as keenly as if it had been his own. 

“It is nothing…I merely wonder exactly how much of Azula’s cruel streak is of her own making, and how much of it is your father speaking through her like a puppet.”

“She has never been his puppet,” Zuko denies.

Iroh steps forward, coming to rest at his nephew’s side, heavy eyebrows raised. He purses his lips. 

“If you believe that then you are truly as blind as she is, prince Zuko.”

The look that Zuko turns on him is offended. Iroh offers him a mild smile in return, patting his shoulder solidly. A soft snarl escapes the boy but no more as he returns his scowl to the sea stretched out before them. 

One can hardly discern the water from the horizon today. Iroh squints out at the vague haze of it. 

“If I could see half of the things that Azula can see, I wouldn’t be so…” Zuko’s frown only deepens, and Iroh feels the scratch of pity against the cavity of his chest once again. Neither of Ozai’s children want his pity, however. “I would never have walked us into this mess.”

Iroh hums in contemplation at this, disagreement quick to bubble up behind his teeth. 

“I think you could already see that her intentions were not so noble,” he answers his nephew easily, “you just wanted to believe the best of the situation. That is not something that I can honestly blame you for, Zuko.” 

“I nearly got the both of us killed.”

“But you did not. Not this time. It was a mistake, and mistakes are learning opportunities…So long as they are not bad enough mistakes that we die because of them.” He cannot help laughing at himself. Zuko’s shoulders stiffen. Iroh softens again.

“You will do better next time,” Iroh consoles him. Zuko’s shoulders fall again. Silence settles between the two of them, long and thick, as Zuko watches the ship’s course in the water. 

“I’ll try uncle.” 

The old man nods, wandering over to the low table that sits not far from Zuko’s position at the helm. He sits on the cushion beside it, grunting with the effort which cracks in his knees and makes the base of his spine ache in kneeling down to rest. 

“We still haven’t spoken much of that day,” Iroh ventures after another lengthy silence. Zuko’s back remains to him, but it’s obvious enough what he’s feeling by the way that his spine stiffens at the words. “I thought perhaps that you would know by now that you are free to say whatever it is you might feel in my presence, and not be afraid that I will be angry with you over it.”

It’s Zuko’s turn to sigh.

“I know,” he says flatly. 

Iroh waits. Zuko’s voice is brittle the next time he speaks. 

“What did I ever do to him?”

“Zuko you did not do anything wrong. Your father…is a complicated man. He takes after our own father more than I have ever done, and he too was complicated. He might perceive that you have done something to offend him, but really it is up to him what is and is not offensive. Anyone can see that you are trying your best. Eventually, you are going to have to come to terms with the fact that only you can give yourself approval. Only you can make yourself feel worthy. It is not something that your father can make you feel.”

“…I have failed at absolutely everything I have ever tried to do, uncle.” Zuko’s voice has gone hoarse, and Iroh bows his head, mournful for him. “I don’t know where I’m supposed to go from here. I don’t know what to do, and I don’t know who I am anymore…And to top it all off, now I’m an accessory to abducting my sister.”

Iroh cannot help the wheezing chuckle that escapes his lungs at that.

“Yes…I am sorry for that. I confess that I did not really think my actions through before I was performing them, in this instance.”

Another pause.

“Aren’t you the one who’s always telling me to think before I act?” Some of the warmth has come back to Zuko’s voice, and Iroh can only smile at this fact. 

“Yes, I suppose that I am. Sometimes I must remember to follow my own advice.”

“At least it isn’t just me,” Zuko answers. “…Has Azula actually been talking to you?”

“Yes…and no. For the most part she simply says the same things over and over; makes the same threats, and the same promises. She did surprise me today, though.”

“How so?”

“She thanked me.” Iroh thinks back to the words. She’d said them in a way that he believes to be genuine, and that is the biggest shock of all. Perhaps being alone down there, and in a compromising position for so long, has made her have second thoughts. Perhaps she is finally softening from weariness.

Iroh still isn’t certain.

“For what?”

“For acknowledging her gifts, I think.”

“What gifts?” He sounds defensive. Iroh puts up his hands placatingly.

“Now, now. There is no need for jealousy. I was only making an observation. She is the one who turned it into praise.”

“She would.”

“Zuko…” Iroh feels a brief, momentary, pang of despair, and then moves passed it. “You know, you and your sister may not be as different as you believe that you are.”

“That’s hilarious,” Zuko answers venomously, and Iroh knows that he’s said the wrong thing. The younger man paces away from the wheel, agitated now. Iroh bites back what feels like his thousandth sigh for the day. 

“I know that you like to think that you and Azula are different, Zuko, but in the end, are you not both only seeking your father’s approval? She would be just as lost as you without it. She knows this. She knows that there is very little separating her from the life which you have led and that scares her. That is why she treats you the way that she does. It is fear, Zuko.” 

“Azula’s not _afraid_ of anything!”

This time the sigh escapes. 

“Outwardly, it would certainly seem that way.”

“Urrghh! You’re crazy,” he accuses loudly. 

Iroh closes his teeth. He will not get through to his nephew on this point. Not now. Not so soon after his sister’s slights, and his father’s newest rejection. As ever, it will be an achingly slow process. One which may not come to a close any time soon, if Iroh is to rid them of Azula for their own sakes. 

“Peace, Prince Zuko,” he finally says, steadily, “we will not talk of this any more. Obviously it has upset you.”

Zuko lets out another low growl in frustration, gesturing sharply. Fire streams from his fingertips in his rage, but no more, and Zuko goes back to navigating their stolen ship, muttering to himself all the while. 

Iroh closes his eyes, resting his hands atop the ample swell of his belly. This requires more time than he can give it, he knows. He feels his heart fill up with regret. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s a chill in the air but Azula pays it no mind. She can keep warm enough through the power of her will alone. It doesn’t stop her uncle from placing a thick cloak over her shoulders to cut some of the bite from the wind, however.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uncle Iroh says: Don't grow up too fast, kiddies. 
> 
> As always, thank you for reading :D

IV

 

Azula

 

 

A week of effort pays off. Azula imagines that part of it is that her uncle is tired of making the trek up and down the stairs every few hours, only to stay for a few minutes while she eats her meal. The other part is likely that _he_ imagines that it will play to her good will, to let her up on the deck for dinner.

There’s a chill in the air but Azula pays it no mind. She can keep warm enough through the power of her will alone. It doesn’t stop her uncle from placing a thick cloak over her shoulders to cut some of the bite from the wind, however. 

Across from her, Zuko stares daggers. She returns the look in kind, stabbing a chopstick through a piece of komodo-chicken instead of lifting it daintily as she’s been taught from childhood. Her chains jangle noisily, the morsel shoved into her mouth pointedly. Azula chews with a certain violence she really only reserves for her brother’s benefit. Across from them, their uncle clears his throat, and heats his tea through the cup with his bending once more. 

“What a lovely evening it is,” he says to break the tension and the silence. 

“It would be easier to enjoy without these,” Azula answers smoothly, jangling the chains at her wrists pointedly. Iroh hums as though in consideration of this, chuckling. Zuko doesn’t find it nearly so endearing.

“You should consider yourself lucky! Considering what you did, how you tricked us, we should still have you chained to that cell wall with no room to move. Uncle is being more than generous just allowing you to step foot in the fresh air!” 

Out of the corner of her eye she catches their uncle’s movement as he places his bowl back upon the low table the three of them sit at. He folds his hands in his lap, watching them in silence. She wonders what good he thinks he might be able to do if this goes badly for Zuko.

She doesn’t reply to her brother right away. Instead, she takes up her other chopstick carefully and squeezes the smooth length of the utensils between her fingers, taking a daintier morsel of food, a thoughtful bite, before setting her own bowl down upon the table as well. Zuko is always so quick to throw his anger in everyone’s faces. He has no tact. She’s known this well for some time. It hardly surprises her. 

“Honestly Zuzu,” she sighs finally, expression neutral as she looks down her nose at the table before finally allowing the amber of her gaze to flicker up to meet Zuko’s gold, “it was nothing personal.” 

Azula bites back a smirk, settling instead for looking morose. 

“Nothing personal?” Her brother’s voice cracks. “How is it not personal for _you_ to be the one to bring me and uncle back to the Fire Nation to be tricked into being thrown in prison?” Zuko’s outrage echoes off of the tall tower of the central structure of the boat. The wind swallows it again but a moment later. 

Azula affects boredom, sighing.

“I was just doing what dad asked me to do.”

“As if you’ve ever done what dad asked you to in your life.” 

Azula’s brow draws low. He has no idea. 

“Please,” she bites out. “You don’t know _anything_ about my life. You’ve never once understood anything outside of your own feelings of inadequacy. Everything’s always about _you_!” Everything always has been.

Father might give her praise, but he is endlessly wrapped up in Zuko’s failures, always turning his gaze toward her brother rather than her. Mother had done nothing but dote on him, ignoring Azula to the fullest of her ability. When it had become apparent that Azula would not be the little porcelain doll she’d wanted, the tiny clone of herself to dress up as she wished, Ursa had cast her aside. 

Resentment builds steadily in Azula’s chest, hot and stinging, escaping its confines deep within the recesses of her subconscious.

“Everything is about _me_?!” The incredulity is palpable. Zuko breathes out steam, his hand slamming on the table. “Father never once praised me! In fact he never acknowledged me unless I’d done something he disapproved of, which was always! HE BURNED OFF HALF OF MY FACE!”

“Zuko, Azula, please — “

“Shut up uncle!” It’s chorused in one voice, and the old man clamps his teeth shut with a click, lips sealing. They turn back to one another, and Azula says out loud what she’s thought every time that Zuko’s punishment is brought up.

“It was only what you deserved!” The words feel bitter on her tongue.

There is silence then. Zuko’s eyes are wide, his chest heaving. Azula waits, glaring at him icily, expecting him to do something dramatic — 

Zuko chucks his hard porcelain tea cup at her, and Azula just manages to dodge her head out of the way, her spine rigid where she sits on her low stool. The cup shatters noisily some feet behind her. She takes a steadying breath, and then another, glaring at her brother across the table where he is still poised, ready, a picture of masculine aggression.

She bares her teeth.

“Now — “ 

Before their uncle can say more Azula has risen from the stool, taking another sharp breath into her lungs, ready to unleash her wrath upon her brother _finally_. 

Azula bounces in place, intent upon using her upward momentum to shoot flames from her feet. Her motion is stopped short, and Azula feels the breath leave her lungs when there is a swift jerk on her form in the opposite direction, and all of her momentum is redirected downward into the hard metal of the damp deck. 

A wheeze escapes through her lips before Azula can draw another full breath, and her chest feels like it is caught in an iron vice as she coughs first once and then twice. Her shoulder smarts.

Azula lets out a growl in frustration, catching the motion of his body as her brother straightens out of his defensive crouch, staring at their uncle in disbelief. 

“Princess Azula,” her uncle’s voice is steel, the chains connecting them making a sound akin to bells while he collects the length of it to shorten the distance of her leash. “What did I say about your behaviour?”

“Oh stuff it,” she grinds out, voice stilted with the ache in her lungs, “where am I going to go Uncle? We’re out in the middle of the ocean it’s not like I’m going to overcome the two of you and jump overboard to swim for it! Zuko and I were just about to have a friendly sparring session, that’s all.”

There’s too much venom in her tone for him to take the claim seriously. 

“Escape is not what I’m worried about,” her uncle returns dryly. He looks between the two of them, expression hard, and Azula finds that she has yet to recover well enough to at least move to a seated position. Her head falls back against the deck, and she winces when it connects. 

“I expect the two of you to act like civilized adults,” he tells them then. His tone brooks no argument. Azula thinks that, for once, he sounds like their dad. It makes sense. More sense than the jolly old fat man act he likes to play continuously. Azula finds she might even prefer it.

Zuko backs down, turning aside at the look that their uncle levels at him. Her brother storms off to the other side of the deck a moment later, swooping his hands back to his sides in a wide, sharp, motion which is trailed by the white-orange of his flames. Iroh turns back to Azula, a deep frown tugging at his brows.

“Come with me,” he commands, stooping to grab the stool which Azula had been seated upon before the abrupt turn in conversation. She sits up painfully, a small groan escaping her throat. Shoulders slumped forward, Azula takes a moment to adjust to the change in her position and then looks up at her uncle once again, eyebrows raised expectantly. She can’t exactly stand on her own with her feet chained the way that they are. Not from the ground.

He sighs and offers out a hand, tugging her upright. 

They turn, and Iroh leads her by her chains to the bow of the ship, setting the stool there and gesturing to it. 

“Sit down and enjoy the view.” It isn’t a request. Azula narrows her eyes, looking sidelong at the old man as she hobbles around the stool and settles herself down on it once again. The wind picks up her stray strands of hair, whipping them to a frenzy. Azula doesn’t turn her attention from the horizon as her uncle’s footsteps echo hollowly away from her and back the way they’d come. 

It’s likely his intention to make her sit here alone and think about her actions. Like a small child. She breathes a puff of steam in agitation, fingernails digging into her palms to leave crescent shaped indents in the skin.

Her uncle and brother’s voices drift back to her on the wind, but they aren’t discernible. She glances over her shoulder at them. They’ve come to quiet conference where Zuko stalked off to to sulk. Iroh’s hand is planted firmly at the center of Zuko’s shoulders. Azula feels her back bow again, curling in on herself for protection from the cool edge of the breeze. She breathes deep, turning away, heating herself from the inside out defiantly. 

Her mind wanders. She’s above deck, at least. She’s in the fresh air. She could make her way slowly toward her quarters, if she’s really careful, though certainly she won’t be able to move in any urgent manner. 

More likely than not they would see her before she got too far. It’s a silly plan. Azula’s lips pull back from her teeth. 

She lifts her gaze to glare out over the empty expanse of the ocean. The moon hangs low and large over the water. That’s the way home, but she cannot guess how many knots it would take to get there. 

Azula closes her eyes. 

“Zuko…” the way her uncle says it is loud enough for her to hear, and she turns abruptly again to look. Her brow draws low at what she sees. Her brother has taken out his precious knife, the white blade glinting in the moonlight, and sliced through the thick width of his topknot. The ponytail slips from his fingers over the side of the ship. 

Their uncle stares gravely, and then reaches out for the weapon. Her brother hands it to the old man. She watches on as he, too, separates his top knot from his head and throws it overboard. 

Her stomach roils. They aren’t turning back. 

Azula turns herself on the stool, forcing her back straight once again, her chin lifted as she continues to cooly observe her relatives now, waiting. Zuko glances her way. Stops. Glares. He turns back toward the water.

For the moment their uncle ignores her completely, reaching out instead to place a hand at Zuko’s shoulder again, saying something too low for her to even hear the murmur of on the wind. Zuko nods stiffly, turns once more and heads back toward the main structure of the ship. Azula watches him go, not bothering to acknowledge her uncle as he approaches her once again. 

Finally, when Zuko is gone from view, she allows her gaze to flicker to her uncle’s stout form. 

“What was that all about?”

“Your brother understands that he cannot go back home,” he tells her simply. “I do not intend to go back home either. Not for now, in any case.” 

Azula grimaces, though she’s not sure why. 

“Zuko has always had a flare for the dramatic,” she says dryly. 

Iroh chuckles. 

“You hold many advantages over him, princess Azula. As his sibling, it is your duty to use those advantages to help him on occasion. Not hinder him.”

“Please.” She rolls her eyes. 

“I know that it is not what your father would want. In many ways, he is like our father used to be. Always pitting Ozai against me, trying to motivate him to be better. I had promised myself that if I ever had more than one child, I would never do such a thing to them. Fate had other ideas, of course…”

Azula scoffs.

“Zuzu just needs to grow up,” she answers shortly. 

Iroh is silent for a few moments, slipping his hands into his sleeves. The look he gives her is contemplative. 

“Is that what you have done, Azula? Grow up?” 

She frowns, uncertain of what he means when he looks at her like it’s a pity.

“Of course I have,” she answers with finality. 

“You are only fourteen.”

“So what?”

Iroh sighs. “So, you comport yourself like an adult. You fight in your father’s war. You command his men, and put them in line…When do you get to be a young girl? When do you get to have fun together with your friends, or gossip, or…”

“We’re in a war, uncle, there’s no point in frivolous gossip, and even if there was _not_ a war, I am hardly interested in what’s in _fashion_ in Ba Sing Se.”

His eyebrows raise high on his wrinkled brow, and he lets out a short laugh.

“No…I suppose you have never really been interested in that sort of thing,” Iroh agrees. He lets his shoulders sag in ease finally, stooping to fiddle with her chains where he’s left them bound to the deck of the ship.

“Come,” he says then, “let’s get you back below deck. It’s getting colder by the minute out here.”

Lingering only a moment more on her stool, Azula finally stands. Together, they walk the length of the ship in silence and then descend below into the darkness. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The door at the end of the long hallway creaks open loudly, and Azula blinks off the last of her sleep, coming to alert attention as she hears hurried footsteps making their way toward her cell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thanks for stopping by :D

V

 

Azula

 

 

The ship has stopped. The absence of its pervasive hum is what wakes Azula from the fitful slumber she’d fallen into in her cell, and she blinks to awareness slowly, confusion a thick fog over her mind that clings, lingering long into her taking in her surroundings. For a moment, she doesn’t remember where she is. She recalls her plight all too quickly, however.

Slowly, she drags herself to a seated position once again. Her limbs feel heavy, weighted down by weariness. Her slumber has been fitful at best these past weeks. Thanks in part to the uncomfortable position she is kept in. 

The door at the end of the long hallway creaks open loudly, and Azula blinks off the last of her sleep, coming to alert attention as she hears hurried footsteps making their way toward her cell. Two sets, uncle _and_ Zuko. She wonders what’s going on.

Perhaps father’s men have finally found them. It’s taken them long enough. 

The door to her cell swings open to reveal her relatives’ distinct figures, and Azula stands with the allowance of her new, longer, tethers. She stands softly, her feet numb once again from their confines. 

“Come, we are leaving,” Iroh says, releasing her chains from the wall of the cell and wrapping the excess of them along his arm securely. She gives him a look, and then glances to where Zuko waits by the door, stone faced. She can already imagine what they are going to do next.

This is not the frenzied hurry of someone about to get caught. Her hopes are unfounded, and Azula internally curses the soldiers tasked with finding her for the thousandth time in less than a full month. 

They haven’t come to a port, she knows. There was no jarring of the vessel as they moored, though the engines are no longer running. They’ve stopped in the water, she guesses, come to a conclusion of their voyage. They’ll get in a smaller boat, perhaps.

When they break into the chill night air Azula finds that she is correct in her new assumptions. They’ve stopped in the middle of the ocean, or so it seems until she looks off into the distance and spots the telltale inky outline of land on the horizon. 

Zuko and Iroh usher her forth, Iroh stepping into the little row boat that hangs off of the side of the ship first, offering a hand to her to help her into the vessel too. Azula has little choice but to accept, taking his warm hand in hers before stepping off the edge of the ship. She stumbles, but her uncle doesn’t let her fall, and he makes room to allow her to settle in before Zuko jumps in behind them. 

Azula’s stomach drops with the wobbling of the boat to and fro before her uncle and her brother take to lowering them carefully down toward the calm water beside the boat. The small vessel bobs as soon as it hits the surface, and Azula holds tightly to the wooden seat that she’s set herself upon, chains jangling as she works to keep herself steady.

Zuko takes hold of the oars, settling himself across from her, glaring as he sets them in the water and begins to row. Azula looks back at him, unblinking, gaze steady. He hasn’t risen to a challenge in days when they’ve seen one another, but he seems in a foul mood this evening. 

She wonders vaguely if they intend to leave her vessel to float in the bay now, evidence of where they have disembarked. She finds that this is not the case a few minutes later when Zuko brings in the oars, watching their uncle patiently. 

Azula turns her attention to the old man in time to see him loose two substantial fireballs back in the direction of her ship. They light on something on deck, and the entire thing erupts in a blaze in the time that it takes for Azula to register what they’re doing. Her mouth pulls into a thin line, her shoulders hunching close to her ears.

Of course uncle wouldn’t leave evidence. What a silly thing to think. 

The oars splash against the water again. The boat begins its journey toward land at a steadier pace. 

“Don’t worry,” Zuko says between strokes of the oars, still staring at her from where he’s seated himself to paddle, “I’m sure dad’ll buy you a new one.”

“Planning on letting me go home, are you?”

“Not any time soon.” 

Azula’s lips press into a thin line again, and she turns from her brother, shivering in the breeze off of the water. Iroh reaches behind him and reveals another cloak, settling it about the princess’ shoulders securely. He fiddles with the collar too long, almost seeming fond. 

Her lip curls.

In the distance there’s a loud bang and whistle as the boat explodes. Azula flinches just slightly, but nothing more. Iroh brings his hands back to his lap, sitting comfortably at her side. 

After a time she settles on staring at her brother, watching every ripple of his muscle under his sleeves in time with the stroke of the oars. Listening to his slightly laboured breathing. Watching the concentrated effort on his features. Eventually he lets out a growl of annoyance.

“ _What_?”

“Zuko…” Iroh’s voice, warning. 

“I was just thinking that you’ve found your calling, Zuzu. You’d make a great ferryman.” Azula smiles as sweetly as she knows how, her eyes glinting. 

“Would _you_ like to row?” His voice snaps between them. 

“Perhaps the two of you could find it in your hearts not to argue absolutely every time you’re together?” 

Zuko breathes flames but says no more, continuing in his chore. Azula looks away from him again, eyeing her uncle instead. He looks annoyed. Azula’s eyebrows rise mildly, her mouth pursing.

“We’re siblings,” she says, “what did you expect?” 

“Generosity toward one another,” Iroh responds pointedly. It’s an obvious reminder of her previous full conversation with the old man. Azula lets one of her eyebrows sink, amused. He’s not asking for much, is he?

She turns her gaze back to the open water, watching as land approaches them over the crest of the sloping waves. She bobs with each rock of the boat, balancing herself expertly. Her uncle has taken her hair from its top knot, and the long, dark, curtain sways and hangs in her face with each pass of the breeze. Azula lets out another warming breath.

The rest of their journey passes in silence. Iroh and Zuko jump ship when they come close enough to shore, dragging the boat onto the sand to rest. This time it’s Zuko who helps Azula from the boat. A far messier affair. She knocks into him when she loses her balance at the shortness of her chains, and she huffs her annoyance. 

No happier, Zuko’s grip on her arm tilts closer to bruising and he sets her upright before beginning to drag her along behind him. 

“I can’t walk this fast,” she tells him tersely, tripping for a third time as they set off into the densely wooded area they’ve come ashore in. Zuko ignores her, jaw set. “Zuko!”

“Princess Azula can’t keep up?” His voice is close to taunting. Azula feels a fire growing in her belly. 

“Not when she’s only got half a foot of chain between her feet, no.”

“Boo hoo.”

“I can’t see the path,” she tries again, “I’m liable to get tangled on something and seriously injured. Then how fast will you be able to move?” 

“Nice try, Azula.”

“Actually,” they both turn their attention to their uncle, stopping when they notice that he has come to a halt, “she does have a point. The chains on her legs are a hazard to all of us at this point.” 

He comes forward, and Azula observes cooly as he stoops to free her ankles from their bindings. 

“Uncle…!” Zuko’s whine cuts the space between them sharply. 

“Normally I would say you are correct, it is foolish to allow your sister free use of her legs,” Iroh says, “but we do not have an ostrich-horse to put her on to avoid any pitfalls, and so we must make do. Believe me, I do not like it any better than you, nephew.”

Even if Azula were to do anything, she thinks, this is neither the place nor the time. She doesn’t know where they are; how far they are from civilization. How far it would take for her to row herself somewhere for help or if she even can row herself that far before starving or worse. Her uncle knows this.

She shakes out her feet when they are free. Zuko growls his frustration, running a hand over the dark stubble which has accumulated on his scalp since he cut off his topknot. It’s strange, to see him with no hair at all. Jarring. Just as jarring as having her hair loose, in all honesty. 

“Don’t worry Zuko…” she drawls then, looking back to her brother smugly, “if I decide to attack you I’ll give you fair warning. That way you’ll stand a fighting chance before I beat your sorry face into the dirt.”

Her chain jerks her toward him with a suddenness that she might have found impressive if she hadn’t been expecting a reaction of some kind for the baiting. Azula stumbles into her brother’s bruising grip as he twists his fingers into her collar. She smiles, laughing. 

“Zuko!” Their uncle’s voice cracks like a whip. “Let your sister go.” 

A vein pops in her brother’s neck, and she feels the heat of his breath on her face, and then he releases her. Zuko holds out the end of her chains sharply toward their uncle. 

“At least I’m not an empty, self-centered, monster of a girl who only knows how to get attention by being mean and cruel.” 

Azula looks askance at her brother, her stomach twisting up inside of her, but just as quickly the expression disappears, smoothed away. What does it matter? Zuko’s opinion is no dearer to her than it has ever been. 

“Yes,” she agrees calmly, “I am a monster.” She stares at her brother long and hard, feels the transfer of the chains to her uncle’s hands more than sees it. “Mother was always a very keen observer, and she said as much herself.”

Zuko turns from her, stalking off sharply into the underbrush. His sword comes out, slashing away at the foliage that crowds their way forward. 

Her uncle has paused, leaving space for Zuko to separate himself from them somewhat. He looks at her. Azula continues to stare forward into the night, her chin lifted high. 

“You are not a monster,” he says quietly. “I’m sure your mother didn’t mean it.” 

She doesn’t want to hear this. She doesn’t want to speak of it. Azula forges forward into the forest after her brother, forcing her uncle to walk with her. The old man does not say anything more. 

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Well,” the word comes out as a short laugh from between the girl’s teeth, “maybe that’s it. Maybe you’re more like Zuko and me than you want to let on, and you’re literally only doing this to make him mad, now. Just to see him squirm.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is brief, and the next one is...HEFTY. So please be patient readers, as slogging through it has already been a week long endeavour. 
> 
> Enjoy this one though!! <3

VI

 

Iroh

 

Iroh had thought that he’d already seen genuine emotion from Azula before this, but he had been wrong. He’s never seen anything quite like what he sees now from his brother’s youngest. She’s quieter than usual, trudging in her brother’s wake with a cold expression slipped in place on her child-soft features. 

It’s her form of anger and resentment, he thinks. 

It’s just as telling as the flicker of shock which had rippled over her face at her brother’s words, and the hissing response she’d given in return. It troubles Iroh. 

He has never once considered what sort of impression his missing sister-in-law might have had on her children’s lives outside of her obviously positive influence on Zuko. She’d been with them for so short a time before disappearing, after all. Perhaps he has underestimated the cruelty that even Ursa might have been capable of. She had seemed to favour Zuko, certainly. She had…married his brother. For love. Quickly, of course, and with little consideration for what Ozai might _truly_ have been like, but he remembers the early days, and the swiftness with which, after the initial shock, Ursa had come to adapt to life as Ozai’s wife and begun to thrive within the palace’s culture. 

There is a difference between a public façade and what one is like in private.

Iroh wonders briefly if Azula even allows herself that much. A private personality that is different from the face she puts on in front of her father and the court. He wonders if she allows herself to be a little less than perfect. He wonders if she allows herself to be a human girl and not a sharply honed tool of destruction. 

He wonders if he can afford this new found sympathy for his niece where it’s planted itself like a seedling in his breast.

The sky has begun to grow lighter, dawn approaching them quickly over the Eastern horizon, cresting pale gold at the tops of the old Earth Kingdom mountains in the distance. They have travelled all night. Iroh can feel weariness settling heavily in his bones. By his estimation, they have gone far enough, but Zuko is still forging ahead, and he learned early in this journey that it is best to let the boy wear himself out instead of interfering. 

As such, Zuko surprises him when he stops abruptly and turns back to look at them. Iroh stops as well, raising his eyebrows at his nephew. There’s conflict on the young man’s features, and he looks down again and then up before he finally speaks.

“We should set up camp and rest,” he announces. Iroh nods, smiling briefly. Azula says and does nothing, still as a statue in the twilight gloom. 

“We will find a clearing,” Iroh suggests, “and set a camp there. A few hours’ rest will do us all some good. Then we can continue on our way.”

Iroh doubts that they will be in much danger in the woods from anything other than wildlife. They’re so deeply in the wilderness that the chance of running into other human beings is very remote. It suits their purposes for now. 

Their clearing is small. Iroh secures his niece’s chains to the trunk of a tree and sets out something to cushion her seat before he turns to setting up the rest of their site. Zuko helps him silently with the bed rolls and the fire, and then absconds into the woods once more, murmuring about foraging for a meal.

Iroh watches him go, shaking his head. 

Zuko cannot cease to surprise him.

With another weary sigh, the old man reaches for his bag, fishing within. His hand lights upon the soft pouch that he’s looking for, and he produces it eagerly, feeling within for the wax paper filled with leaves that he will use to make his tea. The ginseng’s scent fills his nose, and Iroh lets out a satisfied hum. 

He sets the kettle he’s packed with them from the ship over the fire, rationing out water from one of their pouches. To his left his niece’s feet scrape the ground as she shifts her position before the tree, chains tinkling. The sound’s become so familiar to him he barely acknowledges it. 

“Did you mean what you said?” The question catches him off guard. Iroh turns his attention to his niece fully, taking in the weary lines under her eyes, and the sagging way in which she is seated. Like this, she really does look like a child. An overworked, small, girl looking for something from one of her family members.

Iroh fishes out the three tin cups he took from the kitchen, setting them at the ready before the fire. 

“About what,” he asks finally. He already knows, but he wants her to say it.

“Do you really think I’m not a monster?” Her voice is stronger than he’d expect from someone seeking an affirmation. 

“I think…” Iroh lets the words that he means to say steep in his mind, searching for the right way to phrase them without turning his niece away from him. She is not like Zuko…She is not even like Ozai. She is like him. Iroh has known it for some time, though he hates to admit it. He has made such a turn from the man that he used to be, that seeing the same person in his niece is a painful reminder of all he has done wrong in his life. 

“I think that you want to do what is right; I think you want to rise to your father’s expectations and to exceed them, and in being able to do so, I think that your father asks more of you than he should of someone so young.” Iroh brushes a hand over his face, rubbing at his tired eyes. 

“But no. I don’t think you are a monster.”

At first she seems relieved, a small, thick, laugh escaping her lungs. Then her expression hardens, and she looks away from him. 

“Well, you don’t really know me,” she says. She is not wrong. 

Iroh falls silent again, pouring the tea once it has become ready, and moving himself painfully to where Azula rests, holding the cup out in offering for her. The girl’s bottom lip juts out stubbornly, as it always does, before she finally turns to accept the drink. Iroh tips it carefully against her mouth, letting her sip at her discretion. 

“I don’t know you,” he finally agrees, sober, “but I would like to. Zuko has always been an open book to me; he’s just like your father. Quick to a temper, easily outraged…” Iroh chuckles. “But you are different, and have always been different. I remember your mother used to ask me what I would do in her shoes, regarding one thing or another when it came to you, but in the end your father took over just fine, and she stopped asking. Perhaps she had given up. Perhaps she thought that you were happy as things were and she did not wish for you to be unhappy…It’s a funny thing, being a parent. There’s rarely a right answer.”

Azula swallows a large gulp of tea as he finishes speaking, eyes fixated on his face. She’s trying to read him. He can see that look in her eye. It’s the same look he gets when he is fixated on something; when his mind is made up. 

“It seems to me that telling you anything about myself would only put me at a further disadvantage, Uncle,” she says in answer. He doesn’t know why he expected anything else.

She’s right again, too. Part of getting to know his niece is getting to know his enemy. To walk in her shoes. To see what damage his brother has done and to try and either undo it, or turn it to his advantage. He hasn’t decided which yet. 

“We are family,” he tells her. “What are we if not vulnerable to one another?”

Azula only seems to clam up further.

“Well…perhaps it will help you, if I tell you what I do know already, from our brief conversations together. I know that you are very brave,” he lists, “and very ambitious. I know that you are sure of yourself despite the position our arrangement has put us in, and that speaks of someone who knows themselves very well…And who is confident that they are not going to remain at a disadvantage forever.”

“No one remains at a disadvantage forever,” she answers him frankly. Iroh chuckles again.

“That is true.”

“I mean, your own prospects are looking up,” she observes then. “You’ve already got Zuko’s loyalty, and now you have dad’s second heir in your custody too. You have him by the beard, so to speak.” Azula lets her words trail off, as though she is leading him somewhere. Iroh stays intent upon her, waiting for her to finish her thought. “I suppose what I’ve really been wondering thus far is what exactly are you planning to do with this play of your hand? You _seem_ uninterested in the throne, so what exactly do you imagine this is going to accomplish other than making dad angry?” 

Azula purses her lips.

“Well,” the word comes out as a short laugh from between the girl’s teeth, “maybe that’s it. Maybe you’re more like Zuko and me than you want to let on, and you’re _literally_ only doing this to make him mad, now. Just to see him squirm.”

Of course that would be the solution that his niece came up with. Perhaps it is true, partially, but Iroh has never been one who really baits his brother on purpose. Sometimes when they were young, sure, but even then he’d had so many years on his brother that it wasn’t exactly… _right_ for him to tease him too mercilessly. He had only been a boy and already Iroh had been a man, by the time that Ozai was old enough to be interesting to him. 

She’s searching his expression. Iroh locks away his thoughts and smiles.

“I can’t imagine why else you wouldn’t have dumped me somewhere already and then been on your way.”

“Dumping you somewhere would not serve myself and your brother all that well. Not without provisions in place,” Iroh answers candidly. 

“Hmph…perhaps not…” 

He sighs heavily once again, reaching for his tin cup of tea and sipping it contemplatively.

“You’re a very practical young lady,” he says then. It’s more of an observation than anything else. He does have to wonder where she got it from. His brother is not known for his practicality, in most cases, though then again Iroh does remember that Ozai has never been wasteful. He’d always been crafty when trying hard enough.

He’d slid himself right into Iroh’s place on the throne, after all…And with barely any bloodshed. 

“It’s necessary,” Azula answers simply. 

Nodding solemnly, Iroh finds his brow drawing low in thought. He considers his niece, her words, everything that he already knows..And thinks that this may be a bad decision, but it is the one he has come to regardless.

The old man reaches over, loosening the length of Azula’s chains around the tree, allowing her enough room so that she can lay her head down on the ground if that is her wish. She looks at him long and hard after he has finished, and Iroh stands with a groan, taking the tea cups with him.

“Get some rest, princess Azula,” he suggests gently, “we still have a long road ahead of us.” 


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The lie is as easy as breathing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This...finally got finished and isn't nearly as long as I thought it would be given the time it took. But! I'm glad it's done. :DD 
> 
> As always thanks for coming by!

VII

 

Azula

 

 

The scent of earth is thick and moist here. It cloys in her nose, distracting. There’s been rain in the last two days, enough to keep herself and her brother, at least, miserable. Uncle Iroh is his usual cheerful self despite the pervasive damp. When they had come to the town it had almost been a relief. Not least of all because Azula’s hands are finally free. She flexes them with a private little smile, gaze sweeping what they’ve come upon at the center of the village.

The wanted posters stare out at them from the town bulletin board, her uncle’s weathered face and her brother’s glaring scar a reminder of just how easily they could be discovered in these more populated areas. Azula feels the corner of her mouth twitch upward, even as her brother’s grip on her wrist tightens to bruising, and his own mouth ticks down in displeasure.

“Well, you really should have known better,” she tells them, “that scar will be recognizable no matter where you go.” 

“Shut up,” Zuko snaps, ducking his face and looking away from the poster. Their uncle sighs out heavily, turning them down a side street and out of the busy crowd. His old face has settled to something akin to grim understanding of their plight. 

“This is a Fire Nation colony now,” he tells Zuko, “and Fire Nation soldiers are crawling all over the place.” Azula swallows the urge to smirk again, crossing her arms and jutting out a hip. She’d missed even the opportunities to do this, with her hands always in shackles. The freedom of not having them on is enough to have put her in a very good mood, considering. When she had discovered that the town was too large to skirt (surrounded as it is on both sides by water) and she would be freed from her chains for a short while so that the three of them would blend in, Azula had nearly done a dance.

Nearly.

Zuko grunts, pulling her in close with a rough hand, attempting to discourage her from trying anything funny, no doubt. Iroh looks between the two of them, considering. Azula has learned to see the wheels turning in her uncle’s mind. It’s not so difficult to catch with practice. 

“Your sister is right,” Iroh continues, “you are very easily recognizable, nephew. I will go out and find something for all of us to change into, to help us blend in a little better. You should stay here with Azula and wait until I return.” Iroh turns to Azula then, and she raises her eyebrows at him, waiting.

“I know that the temptation to bring attention to yourself will be great, princess Azula. I would ask that you do not do so, however, as I am not certain what I will be forced to do if you do choose to make a scene.” 

Azula shrugs, noncommittal. Iroh raises an eyebrow but says no more, glancing once in a meaningful fashion at Zuko and then disappearing once more into the crowd beyond the alley. 

Zuko huffs, pacing a little further into the shade provided by the buildings, sitting heavily on the ground with his back propped against a wall. Azula stays standing where she has been, watching him. She wonders what uncle _does_ plan to do, if she does not cooperate. 

Maybe it’s worth finding out…

Eyes narrowing, Azula saunters toward her brother, an eyebrow raised at him. Zuko looks at her, suspicious, a scowl pulling his features downward. 

“Careful Zuzu, you’ll have terrible frown lines when you’re older if you keep doing that.”

“What do I care?” He has a point.

Azula shrugs languidly, turning so that she can see both the street and her brother in the gloomy alley, watching for their uncle while she lets her mind wander toward what exactly she is going to do with the opportunity she has been given. 

Their uncle will come back with disguises. Something for Zuko to obscure his face with. Something bland and sturdy for them all to dress in, peasant wear. Something not _crimson_. 

Azula paces slowly, her arms comfortably crossed still, contemplative. 

She won’t lose her brother in an alley, and fire bending will only alert their uncle to the fact that there is trouble, especially given the unique colouring of Azula’s fire. The girl hums to herself tunelessly. She turns to pace back toward Zuko. 

No, fire bending won’t do. Their uncle will catch up to her even if she _can_ stop Zuko (and she can, she knows that she can). He will try and stop her. She doesn’t know all of his skills. He is an enigma on that front. She feels a little sorry for herself for not having broken her father’s rules more often as a child. If only she had been able to spy on her Uncle as often as she’d wanted while he practiced his katas. If only she could have spied while he taught Lu Ten how to fight. 

She cannot change the past. 

No…The best option is perhaps to give them the slip in the crowd. It’s a busy day. Once she’s dressed in Earth peasant clothes she won’t be recognizable in a sizeable mob. She will be able to slip away and lose them. Find Fire Nation soldiers. Return home and exact her revenge. 

Azula stops, standing before her brother silently, staring down at his bowed head. His gaze flickers upward to glare back at her, and finally he lifts his chin, looking almost noble; defiant. 

“Can I help you?”

“No. Well — maybe.” 

Zuko scoffs, turning to look at the opening to the alley where their uncle had disappeared before he returns his attention to her, attempting to look forbidding. He almost does a good job of it. He looks an awful lot like their father, on occasion. 

“Explain something to me,” she continues after it’s apparent that Zuko isn’t going to bite all on his lonesome, “what exactly has uncle told you about the reasons that he came along with you on this…extended trip out into the big wide world?”

“I don’t think I catch your meaning,” he grinds out unhappily. Azula shrugs.

“I mean — what advantage do you think he saw when he went with you?”

“Uncle isn’t like that.” Zuko bites the words out of the air sharply. “He’s not like _you_.”

Azula purses her lips.

“No?”

“No.”

“So he didn’t…Rightly guess straight away exactly what my plans were..? And then concoct a plan to play along with what I wanted until we got to the Fire Nation, just so he could kidnap me right out from under father’s nose _just_ to make him angry? He didn’t…” she lets out a chuckle, “ _plan_ to kidnap me so that he would have custody of both heirs and therefore the ability to demand whatever he could possibly want out of dad?”

Zuko’s face has gone white as a sheet, but he’s angry with her. She can tell. 

“Shut up Azula!” 

She shrugs delicately once more.

“Whatever you want, Zuzu. I’m sure I’m just paranoid from years of experience.” She trails off, turning away from her brother to face the other alley wall. Azula pauses, dramatic, lifting a hand into the air as though to dismiss her own idea before she’s voiced it.

“But I mean — that is exactly what dad was afraid of.”

“What are you talking about?” Zuko huffs, annoyed.

“When he tried to stop uncle from leaving with you,” Azula says, as though it’s the most benign thing in the world, “He was afraid that uncle would use you to his advantage, and purposefully be a detriment to your quest, and to your learning the lesson that dad was trying to teach you by sending you away in the first place.” The lie is as easy as breathing. 

“Uncle disobeyed our father’s wishes and boarded the ship anyway,” she continues, “Didn’t he ever tell you?”

“…Shut up, Azula…” The words are so quiet she has to strain to hear them, but she knows that she’s struck a nerve. A little doubt that Zuko has been hiding away in his breast, afraid that their uncle wants something from him. That his love is as conditional as their father’s. 

And of course it is. What love isn’t?

Azula says no more on the matter, turning as their uncle bustles back into the alley, heavily laden with their new things. The robes he has purchased are practical, and new. Good quality, though they may be rude. Azula accepts the simple peasant’s dress that he hands her and purses her lips, shaking it out before she turns a pointed look to her companions.

Both men pause as she looks at them, staring back, and then they turn from her, keeping their backs respectfully to the princess while they go about changing out of their Fire Nation weeds. 

Azula turns from them as well, shrugging off her fine (though travel worn) tunic and her remaining accessories. Once she’s dressed again she forces herself to take stock. She surely looks completely different now. A young Earth Kingdom woman with nothing to her name. She ties back the longest sections of her hair with a strip of fabric, happy to get the majority of it out of her face. 

Azula turns back to her kidnappers. Zuko’s face has been cast into shadow by the straw hat their uncle has provided for him. The old man hands one out to her as well, and collects their old clothes, tying them into a bundle to add to their travel gear. 

Balancing the hat carefully on her head, Azula folds her hands at her back, waiting. 

“There are a few good food vendors in town,” Iroh tells them both easily, “we should be able to get enough to last us for several more days, until we reach the next town, so long as we ration it right.” 

He looks between the two of them, almost seeming suspicious for a moment.

“I see that the two of you managed not to come to blows while I was gone.”

“Oh no, Uncle,” Azula answers simply, “in fact we had a very nice chat.”

“Hmm…Is that so?” He seems as though he might say something to the contrary, as though he _knows_ that she has been sowing seeds of doubt in Zuko’s mind, but a moment later he is grinning, “I am very pleased to hear it. Come. If we travel quickly enough, we should be through the city by the day’s end, and be able to get to a good campsite before sundown.”

Her uncle’s hand is the one which comes around her arm as they head back into the street, steady, not bruising like Zuko’s; more confident in his ability to keep her under control than her brother, no matter what the fallen prince might assert on the matter. 

Perhaps he’d been listening to her little talk with Zuko…

Azula sticks close to Iroh’s side as they make their way into the market, eyeing her brother, keeping tabs on both of her abductors with ease. From here she need only find the opportune moment. Perhaps when Uncle has turned his thoughts to the purchase of supplies, and left her to Zuko. Zuko is likely distracted enough now with what she has planted in his mind that he won’t necessarily immediately take notice when she does melt away into the crowd.

And if Iroh had been listening to her? He will likely keep her close to him anyway, and Azula will have a harder time of it but — the right word to the right person who might overhear and surely they will be facing down Fire Nation soldiers before either of her relatives have the time to concoct a new plan and whisk her away from the city. 

She settles her plan in her mind’s eye, picturing her escape as they approach first one vendor and then another. As she lulls her brother and uncle into a false sense of security. 

Until she sees her opportunity walk straight out of a tea house that sits across from their newest supply stand and look directly at her. 

Azula uncrosses her arms, watching her uncle and brother from her peripheries. Zuko notices. She takes her chance while she can, starting to walk confidently into the crowd that passes by them in a sea of bodies. 

Zuko hisses her name. She ignores him. 

His hand is around her wrist, digging into the bone, dragging her back a breath later. It’s enough of a disturbance that the soldiers take notice. Zuko looks at them, grimaces, realising too late that this is a mistake. They see his scar. They shout.

“Uncle!” Zuko drags Azula back further, his arm strong around her upper body while he wrangles her out of the crowd and toward the nearest escape route. Iroh is at their sides again a moment later, his gold eyes flashing between them and the soldiers that Azula has managed to alert. 

“Remember what we discussed, Zuko.” 

“Yes uncle.” 

Azula nearly growls in frustration, kicking her feet as Zuko begins dragging her away to what is obviously a preplanned escape route. Her brother has her in both arms now, wrestling her back. Azula spouts flames from her feet. The crowd panics. 

It’s enough to unbalance her brother, and the two of them tumble into another alley that smells of piss and garbage. The ground is hard under them, but Azula won’t give Zuko the chance to maintain the upper hand. Her fingers clamp on his wrist, hips tilted upward as she rolls them over.

Zuko looks genuinely surprised to find her in the top position a moment later. He clenches his teeth. Azula grins and separates from him, staggering back and starting for the entrance to the alley once again.

Zuko’s hand is at her ankle. She falls. Grunting in annoyance Azula turns sharply, loosing a shot of fire from her fist at her brother’s face. He crunches forward, swiping the flames away. They grapple again.

Stones bite into Azula's back, the alley toppling over backward with the momentum of their tussle. Another blast of flames, Zuko’s. Azula has him off of her a moment later, and in the confusion of the roll she lands a heavy blow across her brother’s face. Her knuckles ache from the connection with his cheekbone. Azula stumbles back and away from her brother again, heading for the street.

The soldiers are fighting uncle. She can hear the quarrel in the distance, but if she can join the foray, the soldiers will likely succeed, and she will be on her way home. Maybe with the Dragon of the West.

Zuko might be a prize, but Iroh….She can taste the accolades on her tongue. Hear the praise her father will heap on her for bringing in Iroh, who had been the one to master mind kidnapping her, and exposing him to Fire Nation justice once and for all. For his cowardice and his betrayals. 

After that, capturing Zuko will only be a matter of time. If they don’t catch him today. 

Azula’s hair stands on end, the air charged. She turns just in time for the gush of hot air to rush passed her, followed by the sucking of oxygen in its wake. It makes her lungs feel briefly compressed. She swipes back at her brother, blue flames towering over them, shooting out into the sky between the buildings. 

The roofs catch fire. There are cries in the street. 

Zuko favours his left, on occasion, and especially when he is angry. It’s his dominant side, she knows, though he has trained his entire life on the right side, as all Fire Nation warriors do. But he’s mad now, and he comes at her with the full force of his might. Azula responds in kind, shooting precise whips of flame out toward her foe. 

Zuko counters, his hand a blade. Flame licks toward her through the air. They both send out a concussive blast as one. Azula feels the impact of it against her chest as she flies back through the air. Her back hits the stale turf once again. She breathes out. Gasps in. She kicks a circle of flames with her feet as she realises that Zuko has recovered from the shockwave of power faster than her and is already upon her again.

He reels back, shielding his face. Azula springs to her feet. One, two, three. Low sweep, a band of blue flame, mid sweep, another band, hot and hungry, grasping at the oxygen in the air, a high throw of her fist toward her brother’s already damaged face. 

He stumbles back with each advance, overwhelmed. He has no plan. His only expectation is that he needs to win. 

She comes to stand over him, her fist wreathed in fire. She smirks, aiming to set his skin ablaze for the second time in his life.

Azula feels the separation of her knee and ankle in quick succession, concussive pains that follow on the heels of one another. It’s too sudden to process quickly. She falls. She hears a cry escape her lungs, and clutches at her thigh, trying to breathe through the agony in her joints. 

Eyes wide, the Fire Nation princess stares at her brother, chest heaving with the sudden effort of drawing in breath. He stands above her, expression grim. He shoots out a fist and Azula winces despite herself. Beside her head, the dirt ground of the alley sizzles, blackened, smoke still curling in tendrils away from where his blast lands. 

Azula swallows convulsively. Even if she wanted to she cannot stand again, she knows. She puts up her hands, feeling them shake. Her gut twists. 

Zuko’s hand is rough in the back of her collar, dragging her bodily toward where the fighting had been at its loudest. Their uncle comes into view, looking charred around the edges, but not much worse for wear. He registers their presence, and the state that Azula is in. She cannot tell more than that. The pain too blinding by half.

When he comes near she can smell ash and smoke. Perhaps it hangs in the air on all three of them. 

Zuko stops, leans over, and hefts her over his shoulder, standing straight with some effort. Neither man says a thing. They both turn to jog from the scene before they can be found again, and Azula moans out, suffering with each jar of her body into Zuko’s shoulder with every long stride he takes beside their uncle and out of the city, back to the wilderness from whence they’d come. 

 

 


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something inside of Iroh snaps. It rears its ugly head, making him nauseous and rage filled all at once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Iroh has a hard time reconciling with what Ozai's put his kids through. 
> 
> Thanks for sticking with it so far! :D

VIII

Iroh 

 

Azula is feverish. Iroh wrings out the cloth he has been using to blot at her forehead into the container of cool water that he’d sent Zuko to get the moment that they’d gotten far enough away to stop and make camp in the wood. He places it back on her forehead, and watches her wince at the sudden cold of it. 

The slice of iris that he can see past her eyelashes is bright as it settles on him, watching. She’s waiting for something. Perhaps for the other shoe to drop. Azula has learned to be cautious of him and Zuko in the last eight hours of her life, and though Iroh doesn’t think he would have handled the situation quite like this…Zuko had done what worked best at the moment, he assures himself. It makes him feel no better about the state of things. 

“How are you feeling,” he asks his niece. Her eyes slide closed momentarily, and he thinks perhaps the pain has finally caused her to lose consciousness, but her eyes open again not long after, wider and more alert than they have seemed since the three of them made camp.

“How do you think,” she answers after a moment. Her pale face is far whiter than usual, skin waxy, covered in a thin sheen of sweat. Iroh feels the tight knot in his belly grow harder. His niece is not prone to admitting her weaknesses, or allowing others to see them, this much he knows. She’s cautious at best with her true feelings.

“Your wounds are not good,” he admits to her quietly, glancing down at his cursory splints where they keep her leg immobile to prevent further damage “They are far beyond my abilities to treat effectively. If we do not bring you to a healer then you will likely never be able to walk the same again. It could permanently affect you.” 

Perhaps it is cruel to worry her, but Iroh wants Azula to understand the full gravity of the situation. It will make the next leg of their journey together easier on all parties, in Iroh’s opinion. 

Azula’s eyes close again, but this time it’s obvious that it is merely because of the pain, and perhaps mental anguish, of her wounds. Iroh tries not to think about the pang in his chest. The sapling that’s grown out of the sympathy that he learned for his niece the moment he heard her say that her mother had called her a monster. It is foolish and sentimental, and he can afford to be neither where is niece is concerned. 

Still, Iroh had not been a good man in his younger years, but none of his family members had ever called him a monster. 

Perhaps this is exactly what Azula wants, however; this feeling of sympathy. The need to prove to her that he’s not all bad. He hates that it is a gamble with the child. He wants to treat her as a young girl, and not an adult threat, and yet he has little choice in the matter.

“You’re being very brave,” Iroh tries, watching her. Her eyes slide open again, steeled.

“I am a soldier,” she says flatly, “I have endured worse.”

A soldier. The word curls at the base of Iroh’s tongue. He thinks of his beautiful Lu Ten, and the words coming from his lips too. Too young. Too inexperienced in battle. He should not have sent him to command at the front. He had been too willing to let his son play soldier. 

Something inside of Iroh snaps. It rears its ugly head, making him nauseous and rage filled all at once.

“No,” he spits the word out, setting aside the bandages he has picked up to re-wind, the turf smacking under his wide palm, “you are not a soldier, princess Azula you are a _child_.” 

The girl seems genuinely surprised, looking at him askance, leaning back into the bedroll that he’s set her upon to do his work. The words spill out of Iroh unbidden but he lets them come as they will.

“Your father has stolen your innocence from you and turned you into a woman before your time! When will you see that an injustice has been done to you and that you do not deserve to have been treated this way? That you are not a weapon, but a person who has yet to figure out who they are? Your brother already struggles with this but at least he had a fighting chance, with your father’s disdain. You have never had a chance in your life simply to be _you_. And you would go back there? To him? To the life you have been forced to lead so far?”

She searches his face still, swallowing hard. He watches the bob of her throat up and down with the motion.

“Is it so wrong to have a purpose?” She’s still defiant, her chin raised in pride for what has been done with her. Iroh’s grief threatens to overcome him. She is just a child. Agni she is just a child.

“There is nothing wrong with having a purpose, but that purpose should be decided upon by you,” he says. “You should have the right to choose what you wish for your purpose to be, instead of being told what it is by someone who does not have your best interests at heart!”

“You know nothing of my father’s intentions!” Her voice echoes around the clearing. This burst of emotion from Azula is new and unexpected, but it’s what Iroh has been searching for the entire time that he has had her under his care. He might have celebrated under different circumstances.

“Don’t I?” He gives her a pointed look, eyebrows raised as the level of her voice raises to match his previous one, denial thick in her tone. “I watched him grow up. When Fire Lord Azulon could not be there to raise him, _I_ was the one to do it. I know your father very well, young lady.”

Iroh takes in a deep breath, levelling out his emotions, loosening his shoulders. 

“You have two options before you, Princess Azula.”

She presses her lips together into a pale, thin, line, and fixes him with a look. Iroh forges forward.

“Either you can decide that you will not cause us more grief, that you will cooperate and not attempt to reinvent what happened in the village today, and I can find you a proper healer who will set the bones well, ensuring that you will have very few complications.” He sets the options out before her like a map, “Or, you can continue to be difficult and cause us problems, and I will leave the bones set as they are, and you can spend the rest of your life handicapped by this injury and likely unable to ever come back as you were. Useless to your father’s cause.”

This last has her face paling yet further, and Iroh nearly feels sorry for saying it, but he cannot afford this emotion, he knows. He has to push it away, and pretend that the idea that she might legitimately choose the second option does not cause him anguish. 

“Well?” He sits stone faced, waiting for her answer.

Azula looks away from him, brow furrowed, her lips pursed in that familiar expression of displeasure that she has displayed so often since they kidnapped her. Then she takes a breath, lips parting.

“I will behave myself, uncle,” she promises, voice flat again. 

“Good. Then I will take you with me into the next town over and we will find a healer.” 

“And until then?”

“Until then, I can only hope that your discomfort will not be overtly intolerable.”

“That’s your drastic measure, is it?”

“I think you should count yourself lucky that it was your brother who took the drastic measures and not me.”

“Says the man who has just informed me that I may never be able to regain normal use of my leg again.”

“I only wish to arm you with the truth, so that you may make an informed decision on the matter,” he tells her truthfully enough. “I will not deny that Zuko’s solution was a little on the extreme side, but you were warned.”

Azula scoffs, disdainful, but does not argue back again. Iroh soaks the cloth in the water once more, wringing it out methodically, and placing it back on the princess’ forehead with a huff and then silence. His amber gaze turns pensively out toward the dark trees surrounding them beyond the scope of the campfire, searching the shadows for any signs of danger.

There are none. He is surprised that they were able to shake the soldiers that Azula had alerted, but he is grateful. He knows well enough that they have only hindered themselves more by wounding her. She cannot move quickly now, and it will mean that only one of them can fight at a time without a handicap. 

It feels like the bars of a cage closing around him. Iroh shakes the sensation off. 

There is a crunch of undergrowth, the slither of a footfall, and then Zuko reappears from the woods, looking between his uncle and his sister silently, grim. Iroh lets out a breath, and settles himself, smiling briefly at his nephew. 

“Any sign of someone following?”

“No. I think we’ve finally lost them. For now.” 

Iroh nods, feeling a sense of ease return to him despite his previous rage at the young girl lying at his knees. So he had been right. 

“We must discuss where we will go from here, Zuko,” he informs his nephew then. The young man nods in return, settling himself at the far edge of the camp, away from Azula and her sickbed. 

Iroh glances down at her. “Don’t go anywhere.” He can’t help but smirk at his own joke. She rolls her eyes at him, but says nothing.

The old man stands, crossing the clearing to sit next to his nephew, a package of dried meat in hand to share with Zuko. The former prince of the Fire Nation murmurs his thanks and takes a bite of the jerky, staring over Iroh’s shoulder at his sister’s still form on the sleeping roll. Cautious. 

Even injured, Azula can pose a threat. 

“She seems to have seen sense,” Iroh tells him in low tones, “and to understand the gravity of her situation. We will head toward the nearest town starting in the morning. We need to find her a healer, and I must make contact with some old friends in order to make our way easier…”

“Old friends?”

“Yes. I have traveled the world before now, and I have made many friends and acquaintances in my lifetime. They will no doubt be happy to help us out. Especially now that we are truly fugitives from the Fire Nation and not simply…banished Royalty.” 

Zuko closes his eyes, breathing out sharply through his nose. Iroh reaches across the short distance between them, squeezing his nephew’s shoulder. The boy cracks an eye open, staring at Iroh in a way that he has not seen before. The old man’s brow screws up in bemusement, wondering at the troubled look on Zuko’s pinched features.

“What is the matter, Zuko?”

For a long pause, the former prince does not answer, but then his lips part, and he takes a breath. “Nothing. It’s…nothing.” He looks away briefly.

“What exactly is your plan, Uncle?”

“To find us somewhere safe to live.”

“Okay but what does that entail? I mean where exactly do you imagine is safe for us now? We can’t really just waltz into any towns without the need for extreme caution. Even if the next town isn’t a Fire Nation colony, that doesn’t mean our wanted posters won’t be out and ready for any bounty hunters that want to bring home a big prize.” 

“This is true,” Iroh agrees, “but it is unfortunately something we will have to face regardless. We either face death in the Earth Kingdom if discovered, or we face death in the Fire Nation if we are captured. There are precious few options left to us other than to disappear, at least for a while.”

“But I don’t — !” Zuko presses his mouth into a thin line, much like his sister has a tendency to do. Much like their father in his youth. “I don’t want to disappear into obscurity. I want my throne. I want to be forgiven for — “

“For what, prince Zuko? You never did anything wrong to begin with.”

“Yes I did! I spoke out of turn. Dad banished me to teach me a lesson, not to get rid of me permanently.”

Iroh feels himself sink a little. Zuko is still so naive about this. So blind to the truth. It feels wrong to dash his hopes, but Iroh cannot so easily allow him to continue living in an illusion as he had done before. There had been hope before. There is no turning back from what they have done now. 

“I know that that is what you wish to believe, Zuko…But the truth of it is that your father sent Azula to come and arrest us. His intentions were to lock you away in the Fire Nation, not to bring you back into the fold.” He reaches out, pressing his hand to his nephew’s wrist. He squeezes.

“Your father…is not a good example of what a father should be. I know that it is hard for you to accept because you want nothing more than to please him. To be accepted for who you are…But your father is not going to do that. He has demonstrated as much. There are still those in this world who care for you, though, and you are not alone.”

“People like you?” There’s sharp anger behind the question, though it borders on dull and hopeless. Iroh’s brow furrows. 

“Yes. People like me.” 

Zuko is silent, staring off into the wood, his hands still as they hang over his knees. Iroh cannot quite read whatever slips over his beleaguered features, the conflict within him rising and falling like waves on a remote shore. 

“Zuko…”

“I’m tired,” he says glumly. “I’m going to sleep. We should start early if we’re gonna make it to the next town over in good time. Wouldn’t want Azula to be permanently damaged now, would we?” 

Zuko’s hand slips out from under Iroh’s grasp, and the old man retracts his touch, letting his hands settle in his lap as he watches Zuko unfurl from where he’d been seated to trudge over to his sleeping roll. The boy hits the ground with a solid thud, grabbing the fabric to pull tightly over his shoulders, a defiant ball staring off into the woods beyond their camp. 

Iroh bites back a heavy sigh, taking a piece of jerky for himself, and then returns to his vigil at Azula’s side. When he sees her face he finds that she appears to have fallen into a fitful slumber. He will not bother her for now. She will need this rest and more if she is to heal. 

Iroh settles his back against the tree, closing his own eyes. 

He surrenders to the peaceful dark of meditation. 


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What makes you think I will ever be a member of this secret…pai sho society of yours,”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for your patience everyone. Chapter ten should be close on its heels. :)

IX

 

Azula

 

 

“The breaks are bad, but they are clean.” The tingling, cold, sensation of the water that has been circling over her wounds dissipates, and Azula watches in fascination as the relatively old woman returns the water to the basin at the corner of the room. At her core she is, of course, mistrustful of the water bending peasants who generally lie at the furthest reaches of their borders. She’s never fought any of them save the Avatar’s travelling companion, and the girl had been deadly…

And even Azula could see that she was far from polished at the time. 

None of this mistrust means that she does not find interest in other bending styles, however. In how they can be manipulated to fit into her own style, and surprise her enemies. None of this means that she doesn’t wonder, briefly, if fire bending could be turned to such purposes as healing, just as water bending has been.

She decides it’s probably silly. Even if it could be, and there were practical applications for such a technique, it is more prudent to continue studying it to fight, rather than turning her attention away from martial skills for an unknown amount of time.

Especially if she wants to keep her father’s attention. 

“I’ll re-splint them with something proper,” the healer, Master Kana, continues, “bandage them up good.” The old woman glances at Azula, her light blue eyes not unkind, the princess thinks. 

“She’ll need something to walk with,” she adds, turning back to Iroh, “when she does walk. Of course it’s preferable if she were to rest and not put undue strain on the breaks too early. If she does not wish to cause permanent damage.”

“I am most certain that she does not,” Iroh answers evenly, “but unfortunately we do not have the means to stay in one place, as yet. I would not wish to overstay our welcome, and I think that staying in town would only invite trouble.” He strokes a hand through his salt and pepper beard, humming thoughtfully to himself. Azula observes the familiar stitch of skin at his brow only briefly before she returns to studying the healer’s face. 

She wants to commit her features to memory.

The old woman is lean, far leaner than is likely healthy, all skin and bones and hardly any fat. Her Earth Kingdom clothing hangs off of her frame, her white hair pulled back from her face in Earth Kingdom style, though she is so clearly Water Tribe. Her dark skin holds wrinkles and folds that speak of her endless years amongst the living. 

She is far older than Uncle Iroh. But the old woman shows him deference, as though he were not in a peasant’s rags. It’s strange.

But then, so was their greeting, and her uncle’s sudden decision that she would be the preferable healer over another more reputable healer in town.

Azula supposes a more reputable healer might be more inclined to report Iroh to the authorities. As a matter for their reputation. 

What does some little old woman healer with a Pai Sho tile for a sign have to lose?

“I’m certain I can find something sturdy enough to get you through to somewhere safe,” Kana offers with a wave of the hand.

“That is very kind,” uncle replies. The old woman shrugs, smiling at him, as though pleased with the praise. 

“Anything for the Grand Lotus, of course. The Order passed along the news of what happened nearly as soon as it had occurred,” the woman continues in conversation, “Everyone has been wondering when you would surface.”

“It has been difficult to come for help. I put a rather large target on my back.”

Azula frowns, confused not for the first time since they’d entered the little hole in the wall practice and been seen through to the examination room. Grand Lotus. The Order. She stares long at the two elderly people and wonders what connects them. What this _order_ is. 

The woman knows who Azula is, that much is clear from their conversation. So much for her plan to tell Kana of her plight while Uncle’s back is turned. To ask her to send for help. Soldiers to come and ‘rescue’ the princess from her horrid uncle and violent brother.

She will find no such help here.

Azula clenches her teeth, and turns the puzzle of this new information over and over again in her mind’s eye, inspecting it. 

“And your niece is…uninitiated, I presume?”

“That is correct. For now.” 

Azula’s attention turns to Iroh and Kana once again, her gaze intense and suspicious. For now? Her uncle’s intentions once again blur and become unclear. By now she has usually figured out those who she spends an inordinate amount of time with. Her uncle continues to elude her. Her hand curls into a fist, nails biting into her palm. 

“Unlike my nephew,” Iroh continues, “she has a better appreciation for the finer things in life. For the cryptic arts. Given time, perhaps she may even come to appreciate what the world has to offer when it is in balance.”

“ _She_ is right here,” Azula finally snaps. The older folks turn to look at her, eyebrows raised, and Azula feels her glare deepen. 

“Apologies,” the old woman says, stepping in before more vitriol can be tossed around. “Of course you are here. You are to take it easy.” The old woman crosses to her, reaching over to a table next to the examination slab, plucking up a nondescript bag and folding it between her age-softened hands. “This herb is for the pain. You only need very small doses. Your uncle will be able to measure and brew them for you. 

“It will make you groggy,” Kana warns, “but, at least you will not be in so much pain.”

Azula’s lips press into a thin line, but she nods. Right now, there is no pain in her leg, but she knows that this will likely not last. Much as she requires a sound mind, she also requires rest to make her mind work. She will take the herbs when she needs to sleep, she resolves, no more often than that.

Her uncle comes forward, helping Kana sit Azula up. Her vision swims momentarily, but settles, and the princess looks between the two old people with a delicately raised eyebrow. 

“I’ll fetch that walking stick and the splints,” Kana announces congenially, wandering off to do just that. 

Azula looks at her uncle then, left alone with him once more in the quiet of the healer’s hut. 

“The Order,” she tries then, expression questioning. Uncle only smiles cryptically. Azula scowls at him, huffing. 

The old woman comes bustling back, a thick walking stick and her other supplies in hand. 

“This will have to do,” she says to them. “It’s not ideal but — I don’t suppose much about this situation is very ideal to begin with.” She hands the stick out to Azula. The princess takes it, moving her hand up and down briefly, testing the weight of it. Kana takes her wounded leg in hand and sets to work.

When the healer has finished her work, Azula’s grip tightens around the curved top of the hard stick, and then she sets it sturdily against the floor, using it to lift herself from the bed she’s been languishing within. Even with the splints she can feel the rush of blood back into her foot, throbbing sharply in her ankle. Azula sucks breath in through her teeth unbidden, closing her eyes as she breathes through the pain. 

It settles slightly after a few moments, but her breaths remain infuriatingly shallow to compensate for the pain. Clenching her jaw she takes a tentative step forward with the help of the walking stick. Uncle is going to have to carry her again, she knows. She eyes him silently. 

He looks to be deep in thought.

“I have a few more questions for you, Master Kana, if that is alright,” Uncle says then. Azula raises an eyebrow once more. “Azula why don’t you wait outside under the awning in the shade. I will join you momentarily.”

She knows when she is being dismissed. She likes it no better from her uncle than she does from her father. Still, she obeys, hobbling carefully from the house and out into the dust of the street. Azula garners a few passing glances from those on the street, but no more. She finds a low stool and lowers herself onto it carefully, leaning back toward the door. 

She listens. Her uncle’s voice can be made out but not understood through the wood. Kana’s replies are even more muffled. Frowning, Azula presses her ear a little closer to the frame, hoping to hear what they are conspiring over.

“-ong-ong…us…” It’s no better really. Her uncle’s laughter is unmistakable, however, and is followed shortly by the tinkling laugh of the healer before she can hear him making his goodbyes and coming closer to the door. 

Azula leans back hastily, schooling her expression to boredom, making certain to look as though she were simply staring at the passersby the entire time that she waited. Her uncle’s portly figure trundles through the door, and he casts about for her briefly before realising that he merely needs to look down. 

“Done flirting,” she asks flatly. Azula’s mouth tucks up into a lopsided curve. Iroh snorts at her. 

“Come on, we’re going to find an ostrich-horse.”

“Oh?”

“I figure that it will be easier on both you and me if we have something to carry you around on that isn’t my old, aching, back.”

She scoffs, “Inspired.” 

“I certainly thought so,” he agrees. Iroh reaches down a hand to assist her. Azula takes it with a roll of her eyes, eased to her feet with her uncle’s help. They start into the street, Iroh’s hand around her arm.

There is companionable silence between them for a time. At least — as companionable as it can get between herself and her uncle. He seems pleased with himself when she glances at him out of the corner of her eye. She presses her mouth into a line, and then finally gives in to her curiosity, closing her eyes for a breath.

“What is the ‘grand lotus’, and why are you it?”

Iroh’s heavy brow lifts high, stitching to wrinkles as his attention diverts back to Azula. She is careful to show as little emotion as she can force from herself, expectant. 

“Do you really want to know,” he asks. Azula rolls her eyes yet again,

“If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have asked.”

“I don’t know about that…but alright. Since you asked. The Grand Lotus is my title within the Order of the White Lotus.”

“White Lotus…?” Wasn’t that a pai sho gambit? And an old one at that? “So you’re…in a pai sho club?” 

“It’s a little more complicated than that,” he says after a chuckle, “but essentially? Yes.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

“Now, now. Don’t be so quick to judge what you do not understand, princess Azula. I thought you of all people would know better than that.”

Azula huffs. 

“Well, it’s obviously given you connections. I assume it has to do with more than just pai sho, since you felt safe enough bringing me to that healer that you didn’t really need to watch me. Not to mention, she appeared to be aware of our situation without any need for explanation.”

“There you see? You are a very perceptive girl.”

“I have my moments,” she answers dryly. “So it’s some sort of secret intelligence society with networking across the world. Or at least across the Earth Kingdom.”

“More or less,” he answers easily. 

Azula’s eyes narrow.

“Why would you tell me that then? I could tell my father about your secret society of information gatherers.”

Her uncle looks cheerful when he answers her.

“I don’t think you’ll tell him.”

Something inside of Azula clenches at the words, despite his cheerful demeanour. Him not believing that she would tell her father could mean so many things. It could mean that she isn’t ever going home, for instance. She wonders if her uncle is truly above ridding himself of her entirely. Certainly if she were in his shoes she would have done something to take her permanently out of the game by now. She would not have brought her all the way to the Earth Kingdom. She would not have kept her alive on that ship. 

Perhaps he hopes that he can get through to her. Or, perhaps he is merely waiting for the opportune moment. Certainly to keep up appearances he could not have killed her in front of Zuko. It would have given him away. 

That’s probably it. 

Azula steels herself internally. 

“Here we are. This is the place that Master Kana described.” Her uncle makes certain that she can stand on her own before leaving her side. Azula puts all of her weight on her good leg, waiting as he barters with a stern looking man over the price for a sturdy mount. Her uncle comes away with one that looks a little ruffled around the edges, but otherwise healthy. It comes with a saddle and bridle already attached. 

She’s uncertain where he got the money for the beast. Perhaps the healer.

“There. Come and step into my hands here, I’ll give you a boost so you can sit side saddle. I’ll lead the ostrich-horse for you.” He kneels next to her, hands cupped, ready. Azula sighs wearily, hopping over to her uncle and pressing her good foot into his palms. It requires her to compensate with the bad one. She digs her walking stick into the ground hard to keep as much of the weight from it as is possible. 

When she finally gets into the saddle it is on her belly and, exasperated, Azula grunts as she pulls herself in further using her arms, settling awkwardly in the warmth of the leather seat. Her uncle recovers the walking stick where it’s fallen to the dirt road, rubbing at it with his sleeve before he hands it back up to her. 

The wood is still warm and smooth under her palms. 

“Don’t fall off now,” Iroh says with that same gentle cheerfulness he has affected for most of their journey to the healer. Even carrying her on his back as he’d done for most of the way his tone of voice hadn’t changed. She purses her lips.

“I have never fallen from a saddle in my life. I’m not about to start now.” 

He grunts mirthfully, and the ostrich-horse bounces into motion. Azula winces when her splinted leg hits the side of the animal with the movement of its gait, holding it out steadily after that to avoid a repeat offence. 

 

~

 

It’s some time before they speak again. Silence their comfortable companion, they disappear into the forest with the beast. It rises around them like a tide of green, late sunlight filtering through here and there to the forest floor in dappled spots of brilliance. 

“What makes you think I will ever be a member of this secret…pai sho society of yours,” she asks finally, sudden after the long silence. His words to the healer have been nagging at her. _And your niece is uninitiated, I presume? Yes. For now._ Her voice is hushed in the close press of the foliage. Uncle Iroh turns to look up at her in surprise, eyebrows hitting his hairline. 

“Well…” he sighs, his head inclining to the side as he considers his answer. Azula watches from her perch, silently expectant. “You are intelligent, and diligent. You are dedicated to your craft, and adept at many things. I suspect that you like the traditional arts more than you let on, and that you respect the traditions of the other two remaining Nations despite your life’s purpose of putting them on their knees. In short, I see much of myself in you.”

Azula snorts, unable to help herself.

“Yourself?”

“Yes. When I was a different man. Before I lost Lu Ten and had to find myself. I was a lot like you when I was younger. The Dragon of the West, in truth, is not the same person that I have become.

“I don’t doubt it.”

Iroh nods slowly at her remark. Azula watches his expression with care. 

“There was a time when i was possessed of the same ruthless drive with which you execute everything, Azula. I am not proud of that man. He was smart in many ways, but still naïve in others. I did not know what the world could truly offer back then, though I called myself cultured. I did not consider the other side of the argument all that often, except where it would serve me in my military position. I was blind to the fact that my son was not ready to be on the frontlines of a war that we had been fighting for nearly a century.”

Iroh grows quiet, looking sad. Azula cuts her gaze away from the naked show of emotion on his weathered features, concentrating on the slithering underbrush below her. She hears him take a steadying breath.

“I merely hope that you do not grow up and have the same regrets that I do when this whole war is over.”

Azula frowns and looks back at the old man.

“What will I possibly have to regret?”

He’s silent for a moment. “If the Fire Nation loses, what will you lose, princess Azula?” 

Her lips press closed, a thin white line, and she observes the old man down the length of her nose, expression cold as the inlaid gold of a crown. 

“You think that the Fire Nation will lose?” It’s a possibility, of course. One of many. The Fire Nation is at the height of its power, however, and their technological advances far out pace those of the other two Nations. In her estimation, it is very unlikely that the Fire Nation will lose this war. With the return of Sozin’s Comet, too, they will have a once in a century opportunity at finally conquering the Earth Kingdom and the Northern Water Tribe both. They are going to win this war. They are.

“I sincerely hope that it does.” 

Her brow draws low, and she looks sharply away from her uncle, back to the path they are forging through the sea of green before them.

“That’s treason,” she informs him flatly, “and a foolish hope at best.”

“Perhaps it is, but I have already kidnapped the heir to the throne. So what’s a little more treason?”

“Huh. You don’t take anything seriously do you,” she asks blandly. Iroh rasps out a laugh.

“Sure I do. But treason is the least of my worries, at the moment. If you want to talk about treason, I would be glad to point out all of your father’s treasons from the brief moment before he took the throne.”

It’s Azula’s turn to laugh, but it sounds bitter.

“So this _is_ about him usurping you.”

“I did not say that. I merely wish to point out that no matter what I do, he would have eventually found an excuse to jail me, or worse. I might have helped him to grow up, but it is clear that your father feels no filial duty toward myself or any of the rest of us. He serves only himself and his own interests. He wanted to be the most powerful man in the world, and now he is.”

“And you didn’t?”

“…When I was young, perhaps…But once my son was gone, I found that all of my desires and ambitions had turned to ash in my mouth. What good was there in conquering? None. How many loving fathers had I deprived of their sons?” He gestures vaguely at the air.

“They feared you,” she says, and thinks that that is infinitely better than being chased down and used as a pawn in father’s plans. She will never be anything but fearsome to those around her. It’s for her own good as well as theirs.

“My name was feared, yes, but that did not bring me joy then, and it does not bring me joy now. It was a lonely life before, even though I had my son. He was the centre of my world. When he died, I was left with nothing that I cared for.”

“So you went wandering,” Azula guessed, sighing tiredly. It was an old story. Uncle and mother had disappeared at around the same time in her life. When father was rising to his place on the throne. When she went from the daughter of the second prince to the daughter of the Fire Lord. Sister of the heir to the Fire Nation throne. The heir in her own right though it was not official at that time. 

He doesn’t respond. 

“The camp is not far now,” he tells her instead. 

Azula settles into the saddle a little heavier, back slouching. 

 

~

 

They smell the camp before they see it. Zuko’s gone fishing and has pieces of cod scorching over the fire on a makeshift spit. Others he’s left out in a sunny patch with a generous helping of salt scattered on the skins so that they’ll dry out to jerky. He stands in one swift motion when he hears their approach, sheathing his swords when he sees that it’s them. He eyes the ostrich-horse in surprise. 

“Well?” 

He doesn’t look at Azula, cutting his gaze down before their eyes can meet. He concentrates instead on their uncle. 

“Her leg will heal, and she will live,” Uncle answers cheerfully. Azula rolls her eyes for what feels like the thousandth time that day.”

“Good. Then we can move on,” Zuko says, sitting back down before the fire heavily. 

“Well…We do need to wait around here for just…a little longer,” Iroh replies slowly, reaching up for Azula as he speaks. She sighs shortly, accepting his assistance and sliding from the saddle gingerly.

For his apparent level of fitness her uncle is surprisingly strong. He eases her down with the strength of his arms and settles her on the ground so lightly she might have been floating previously. 

The clearing has heated noticeably in response to the shift in Zuko’s mood. 

“What do you mean two days,” Zuko demands, “we can’t afford to stick around here that long!”

“I don’t think we need to worry about camping out for two days,” Iroh answers calmly. He reaches out a hand to help Azula. It comes gently around her bicep, and she wrenches herself free before he can firm his grip. Iroh glances at her briefly before retracting his hands back to himself. 

“The Fire Nation is on our heels!”

“We are in Earth Kingdom territory now,” Iroh answers placatingly, “they will be forced to be more careful. It will work in our favour.”

“Why do we have to stay here anyway,” Zuko demands in turn. Azula is wondering the same thing. 

“I am waiting for word on the whereabouts of an old friend. I believe that he can help us, if only we can make contact with him.” 

So he’d been setting up this meeting while Azula had waited for him outside of the healing hut. She closes her eyes, and swallows against the sudden wave of nausea brought on by the pain of her broken ankle and knee. She leans heavily on her walking stick, breathing out between her lips and teeth. 

“And if we can’t make contact with him,” Zuko questions.

“Azula, settle yourself down and I will make some of that tea,” Uncle invites. She shakes her head only slightly, looking sidelong at Iroh once again.

“No tea.” 

He purses his lips at her, eyes narrowing. 

“You are clearly in pain,” he tells her, “there is no reason that you must be in pain when we have been provided with the means to keep you comfortable. Sit down. I am making you the tea. And you are going to drink it.”

She huffs at him in outrage, limping briskly to her bed roll where it’s been set cradled within some tree roots. It’s more comfortable than it looks. 

“Zuko help your sister sit down,” Iroh instructs. 

There’s a pause, annoyance at being ignored, and then Zuko stands with a long sigh of his own. His hand is at her arm a moment later. They don’t look at one another as Azula is eased to the bedroll. Zuko shrugs off his outer robe, rolling it up and stuffing it at her back without a word before he stalks off back to the fire. She frowns as he goes, settling her spine against the bunched up fabric. 

Forced to take the tea. Forced to stay at this campsite for the next two days. Azula closes her eyes and crosses her arms. She thinks of home.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Mom always said that she loved us,” Azula leads, voice barely parsing the distance between them in the dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I lied about the time between chapters. HAHAHAHA. Thank you all for your patience, please enjoy this one. <3

X

 

Iroh and Azula

 

“That woman is dangerous.” Jeong-Jeong observes Azula coolly down the length of his nose, his gold eyes following every deft move of her pai sho pieces across the board where she plays with Master Shu. A distraction to keep her preoccupied whilst Iroh negotiates with his long time friend. 

He doesn’t find Jeong-Jeong’s words pleasing, however. It isn’t enough that he must remind _her_ of the fact that she is a child, but Jeong-Jeong too? The other master should know better. All the same, he parts his lips to refute the claim.

“She is not a woman, she is a girl.”

“No…” Jeong-Jeong’s dark gold eyes come to meet Iroh’s, disagreement obvious in his severe expression. The light streaming through the windows to their right casts the double slash of scars over the other man’s eye in sharp, angry, relief. “That is a dragon with its giant maw hung wide open, ready to set fire to everything in its path.”

Iroh lets out a puff of air, inexplicably needled by the comparison. 

“She is my niece,” Iroh tells the deserter pointedly. 

“I am well aware. Her reputation precedes her.”

Iroh swipes a hand down his face, weary. His palm scratches against the wiry hairs of his long untrimmed beard, and he fixes his attention on his niece and nephew for a time. He had hoped that this would not prove to be a problem. He’s not certain why he’d thought it potentially wouldn’t be, in hindsight.

“If you truly wish for another member of the Order to take her, then I will make arrangements,” Iroh says finally, turning his attention back to Jeong-Jeong, “but the fact remains that I trust you better than most, and I especially trust your skill. My niece’s reputation precedes her, this is a fact, and for good reason. I cannot leave her with just anyone, and I cannot be solely responsible for her when I am also trying to take both myself and my nephew off of the radar and out of harm’s way.” 

Jeong-Jeong grunts, bottom lip jutting out as he frowns, bowing his head. 

“It would be safest to leave her with you. You are, above everyone, very good at hiding in plain sight. I need my niece concealed until her place in all of this has become clear to me.”

“You want her out of the picture,” Jeong-Jeong translates for Iroh, “but you are not willing to do what it will take to do so more permanently.” 

Iroh feels his guts roil at the intent behind the other master’s words. 

“She is a child,” he repeats in a hoarse, whispering, hiss.

Jeong-Jeong makes another low sound in his chest, tapping his blunt fingers against the table top. 

“As I have said. If you are not willing to do it, that is fine,” Iroh tries, suddenly apprehensive about leaving Azula with Jeong-Jeong. 

“You are getting soft in your old age, Grand Master.”

“Perhaps. But I cannot see another child lost to this war. She has not had control over her circumstances, any more than her brother, even if she gives off the illusion that she has.” Iroh fixes Jeong-Jeong with his amber gaze. “No more than you or I had when we were young and impressionable and full of the lies that the Fire Nation had told us about the world.”

The slightly younger man looks long at Iroh then, and the Dragon of the West can see the wheels turning in the other man’s head. Finally, Jeong-Jeong sighs.

“Very well. I will take her.”

Iroh lets out a breath. 

“Thank you, my friend.” Relief wells up in Iroh’s belly despite his current misgivings, “I am forever in your debt.”

“Mmf. I will remember it.”

Iroh lets their conversation fall to companionable silence for a moment. It surrounds them, buffering the discomfort of his request before he speaks again.

“I would prefer if my niece did not suspect what is to happen until the last possible moment. Will you travel with us to the ferry across to Ba Sing Se? Master Kana had mentioned that they are taking refugees across not far from here.”

Jeong-Jeong nods slowly but is frowning deeply once again.

“And you were not followed here,” he wonders, “last I had heard, Zhao was dogging you and your nephew around the globe.”

Iroh chuckles drily. 

“Your intel is old, my friend. Zhao died. He attempted a siege at the North Pole. He angered the spirits. They dragged him away.”

Jeong-Jeong’s surprise is brief and bright, a spark of regret, before it is followed by weary acceptance.

“I always worried that he would come to an untimely end. I see my concern was founded after all.”

“It was regrettable, but Zhao was an ambitious and mean spirited man, and I am relieved in many ways that he has been taken out of my path. Not least of all because it means that you will be more easily able to travel with us, no doubt.”

“I was never afraid of Zhao,” Jeong-Jeong quips in response, “only concerned that his attentions would lead to my comeuppance.” His expression has grown dark again, however. 

Iroh lets out another sigh. No doubt Jeong-Jeong had harboured hope that Zhao could be changed, but Iroh himself had never seen that sort of potential in him. The concept crawls uncomfortably across Iroh’s skin. What if he only _hopes_ that Azula can change because he is invested in her? What if it is the same with Zuko. _No. Zuko is far softer and kinder by nature than his sister **or** Zhao_. He purses his lips.

“I want my niece to have a chance. I think that — there is great potential within her. I think that she herself could possibly be a Grand Lotus. One day.”

Jeong-Jeong grunts a laugh. Iroh moves on without acknowledging the disbelief in his friend’s tone.

“But if you feel that she is too far gone. If she gives you any reason to — “ Iroh presses his lips into a thin line, not wanting the words to come out. “If you have absolutely no other choice, then I trust you to make the right decision about how to deal with her.”

Jeong-Jeong is silent again for what seems an eternity.

“Not so soft after all, then.”

 

~

 

The newest addition to their party is a peculiar man. Azula recognizes his face from the wanted posters that she’s seen plastered all over the Fire Nation and its colonies. The deserter, Jeong-Jeong. A fire bending master of great renown who had become a turn coat, abandoning his nation for obscurity. The story of his disappearance is tired enough to stick out in her mind at the very sight of him.

He dines with them and says nothing. Rather, he fixes his gaze upon her, and Azula fixes her gaze upon him, and the two eat in silence, sizing one another up. Her uncle is up to something. This is the friend that his pai sho contact had set him up with? Jeong-Jeong doesn’t look like he’s one for pai sho. Looks can be deceiving though...

More than anything, this cements that idea in her mind that her uncle has been participating in treasonous acts since long before he and Zuko kidnapped her. Probably since long before Zuko was ever even scarred by their father. Azula takes a delicate, dignified, bite of her dumpling, eyes narrowing just so. At her side, Zuko is equally as silent. The oppressive weight of it seems to get to Iroh.

“How did your game with master Shu go, Azula?”

She looks over at her uncle, swallowing the salty pork and cabbage filling daintily before she makes her reply. 

“I gave him something to think about.” 

The old man laughs, stroking his broad fingers through the ends of his beard. 

“Good. Then again I would expect nothing less from you.”

Azula takes another bite of her food, staring down at the steaming treats in contemplative silence, feeling her frustration bursting at the seams of her being. Every clink of the plates seems louder and more obnoxious with each passing second. The cutlery clatters like thunder in her ears. 

The princess slaps her chopsticks down upon the table with a bang, the dishes rattling with the motion.

“Why are we here,” she demands.

Beside her, Zuko looks askance, brow raised in surprise at her outburst. It isn’t lost on her how alike to him she is being in this moment. She can’t bring herself to care.

“We came here to meet master Jeong-Jeong,” Uncle Iroh supplies calmly, taking another bite of his own food as though she has not suddenly had a childish outburst more fit for her eight-year-old self than her fourteen-year-old one. 

“Yes, I know, but _why_ ,” she pursues.

“Jeong-Jeong is a master at evading the Fire Nation. We need his expertise on this leg of our journey, and he has agreed to help us.” 

Azula doesn’t believe him, but the answer is so painfully logical that it twists up inside of her, driving her mad. Of course. They would need a way to go undetected. If the Deserter could go this long without being definitively found then he could help them to disappear too. Of course, of course. 

Azula huffs. Zuko clears his throat at her side, and she could swear she sees just the briefest lift of his mouth into a smile, gone so quickly that she cannot really be certain if that’s what she saw at all. 

In all honesty she might have looked for something in him to be offended at in that moment. At least her anger and frustration and pent up energy would have somewhere to go. But no, she will not. Not in the presence of this stranger. Not in this little room they’ve rented for all four of them from the dingy inn. 

The walls had once been a cheerful spring green. Now they are faded and peeling, water damaged in the corners at the roofline from heavy rains coming through the thatching. 

“Azula, I know that you are impatient with all of the proceedings that have been going on since the fated day that you became a member of our travelling party,” Iroh says then, measured, “but please try to understand. I did what was best for myself and for Zuko at that time. Now, I am trying to do what is best for all three of us. This is an opportunity for us to become a closer family; to get to know one another better without all of the expectations of courtly life and the decorum of a royal household.”

“Trying to do what’s best?” Her voice raises again, incredulous. “You threw me in the dungeons of my own boat when I at least honoured the two of you with rooms when I took you captive! You have force fed me tea and dragged me through the wilds of the Earth Kingdom to spirits know where, all in an effort to continue holding custody of me over my father, even after your alleged true intentions for my presence in your party have been met! Your favourite nephew broke my leg in two places to ensure that I would not be going _anywhere_ on my own any time soon! You took me to an irreputable healer in a backwater town to have my leg seen to in order to avoid the authorities and _now_ you have enlisted the help of a traitor to further evade the efforts of the Fire Nation in retrieving me!”

As if in response to her thoughts on it, her leg gives a terrible twinge, and she feels the blood draining from her cheeks. Zuko’s hand comes toward her. She flinches away. He stops, and retracts it, frowning down at his meal. Jeong-Jeong gives no outward signs of being affected by the argument, and her uncle looks — weary? Forlorn? She cannot really tell. She can never really tell. She digs her nails into her palms. 

“I hear your concerns,” her uncle says diplomatically after he is certain that she will not continue on her tirade, “but really they are unfounded. Yes I have decided to keep you around, but I know that you are able to imagine why that is the case. It is safer for me and for your brother that you are in our care, and not pursuing us across the Earth Kingdom in your father’s name.”

Azula grinds her teeth.

“I have no untoward intentions where you are concerned, my niece, and so you can rest easy.”

Azula scoffs in disgust, turning her face away from her uncle, trying to stand in one fluid motion with her good leg. She stumbles.  A moment later Zuko’s hands have come around her to steady her, and Azula wrenches free, limping painfully as a shocking ache trembles up the length of her ruined limb.

“Don’t touch me,” she hisses venomously. 

Zuko puts his hands up, backing away. 

“Where exactly are you going,” her uncle inquires.

Azula presses her eyes closed tight, breathes in sharply through her nose.

“I don’t know,” she bites out sharply, limping ineffectually to the other side of the cramped room to stare out the window at the gathering dark. 

The rest of dinner passes in silence. Azula does not turn to look at the men, keeping her gaze trained on the last stains of purple and pink as the sun sets behind the distant fingers of the mountains. Her uncle retires, as does Jeong-Jeong. Zuko wanders to his sleeping bag but does not lie down. It’s his turn for first watch, even if they are not in the forest. 

He has to make certain that she does not escape, after all. 

Night has worn on before she retires to her own sleeping roll. She doesn’t look at Zuko as she settles herself painfully, carefully, in, her back propped against the thin wooden wall of the room. Their uncle’s snores are nearly deafening in the quiet. 

Zuko glances at her once. She sees him do so out of the corner of her eye. Azula’s mouth pulls down into a scowl, and she stares out into the darkened room, studying the outlines of the barebones furniture in the weak light from the quartered moon. 

She’s heard rumours that the moon spirit is now the spirit of a once mortal woman — a woman lost during the battle in the North Pole. She often wonders what it must have been like to witness the battle. To see the towering spirit monster the Avatar is said to have become as it walked through the entire great city and swallowed their fleet whole.

She wonders what Zhao’s last thoughts were before he was taken. 

She glances sidelong at Zuko, knowing full well he was supposedly there. There had been enough reports of it, from those few who had survived to tell the tale and return to the Fire Nation. Azula thinks of the shadowy figures of those who have left her life in the short time that she's lived it, slipping into the unknown.

The princess’ lips part, and she takes a breath.

“Mom always said that she loved us,” Azula leads, voice barely parsing the distance between them in the dark. Their uncle continues to snore. Zuko starts in surprise, but sobers after a moment.

“Yeah,” Zuko agrees, “she did.”

“So then why did she leave us behind?”

He doesn’t have an answer for her. She can see it in the twitch of his jaw, and the way that his head hangs low for a second before he turns his attention back to the window. He doesn’t know any better than she knows.

“In my opinion,” she says then, “putting too much faith in your caretakers is only asking for disappointment. Do you think that dad always praises me? That my life is easy just because I’m his favourite?”

“Yeah I do,” he answers plainly. And of course Zuko does. That’s the only way he’s ever been able to look at the situation. Azula turns her own gaze down to the shadowed bed roll she’s seated upon. She takes in a breath, sighing heavily. 

“Well, you’re wrong. In fact I think it’s harder than being the disappointment. He doesn’t expect much from you. So when you fall short, it’s not really a big deal.”

“Not a big deal!?” 

Their uncle’s snores cut short, and he snorts, shifting. They pause, waiting. He starts to snore once again. In the darkest corner of the room the newest addition to their party remains silent. Azula is still uncertain of whether he’s asleep. 

“I didn’t do anything wrong by speaking out for our citizens. It was - it was _dad_ who was wrong!” His voice is hushed but his tone remains meaningful. Azula breathes out through her nose, pursing her lips. 

“Maybe,” she concedes, “maybe not. Is uncle any more right for kidnapping me? Was he any more right to allow his son to go to the frontline? The only reason he pays you any attention is his guilt over Lu Ten. You’re his surrogate son.” 

“So?”

Azula frowns. 

“Even if I am just a surrogate son, as you say,” Zuko continues, “he still… _Treats_ me better than dad ever has. He shows me love, and compassion, and concern. I’ve seen him do it for you too, but you push it away — just like I did before all of this.”

“He hasn’t shown me all that much concern,” she disagrees, “he might pretend to be compassionate where I am concerned, but I know that it’s only to keep me pliant to his will. He has a plan and I will find out exactly what it is eventually.” 

“See that’s the problem with you,” Zuko says after a pregnant pause, voice glum, “you assume that everyone has an angle, just like you. Sometimes people don’t have an angle, Azula. Sometimes they just want to help. No strings attached, no favours to retain.”

“You’ve been drinking the iced oolong,” she responds tartly. 

“No…It’s something I’ve known for a long time, but I just always told myself not to believe it because of the environment we were raised in…” He trails off, looking at her silently for longer than Azula would like. “If it’s so bad for you there, then why do you stay?”

Azula lowers her gaze.

“Why do you want to go back so badly,” she asks. There’s another pause. They have the same reasons in the end, don’t they?

“You know…I heard Uncle yell at you, a few weeks ago. He’s right. You’re not a soldier, or a grown woman. You’re a kid. Just like me. But dad never did us the service of treating us like children, even in a country where we don’t send our children to war until they’re at least sixteen.”

Azula bares her teeth, the grimace covering up the sudden returning twinge of pain through her wounds. She wishes uncle were awake so that he could brew her more of the medicinal tea. Having him awake now would only be a detriment, however.  Not to mention the fog which descends upon her whenever she drinks the brew.

Zuko tries again.

“Maybe mom left us…But at least she never tried to use either of us as a weapon.”

“You don’t know that. We were small. Anything is possible.”

“You know what I think is possible? I think it’s a very real possibility that she left without us because dad made sure that she would have to. I think it’s very _possible_ that mom’s out there somewhere, waiting to come home and see us again. Or for us to come and find her.”

Azula snorts, she cannot help it. “You always were an optimist.”

“What so you don’t think it’s possible?” 

She thinks many things.

Azula thinks that Zuko is right about this one thing; their father will do anything to get ahead. Just like her. Just like Uncle Iroh, though she has yet to be able to garner concrete evidence. _Evidence enough that he kidnapped you in the first place. He could have thrown you overboard and watched the men on deck scramble to save you_. Even she cannot quite convince herself of that. 

Azula thinks that their mother left of her own accord because she cannot bear to think of how else Ursa might have disappeared from their lives so quickly and without a trace. She doesn’t want to think about what might have been done to affect that possible scenario.

Azula thinks that in the end Zuko is wrong, and so is Uncle Iroh. She’s too invaluable to father’s cause to be anything but his most important playing piece, and that will secure her future. It already has secured her future. She need only get back home. She need only rid herself of Zuko and Iroh (and now this new companion of his) and get back to the Fire Nation. Somehow. 

Her eyes squeeze shut at another sharp pang through her leg, her hands shaking. 

“Azula?” 

She opens her eyes, looking sidelong again at her brother where he peers at her through the gloom.

“I think that anything is possible,” she reiterates flatly. Zuko straightens a little in the dark. It’s difficult to read his expression.

“Are you in pain?”

“Yes.” What face is she losing here? Zuko knows the severity of the wounds he’s caused. 

“I can wake uncle…”

“Don’t bother.” He’ll wake soon enough. The night is young and Zuko will need his turn at sleep. She will bother their uncle for some herbs then. Until then she will endure. 

“You know, it wouldn’t kill you to show that you’re human sometimes.”

“It might kill me.”

Zuko snorts softly, looking away. She can see the barest hint of a smile dancing at the corners of his mouth again. How wonderful that she can be a source for amusement. Azula scowls.

Zuko stands, coming to crouch at her side and handing out a piece of fruit he’s had stashed in his robe. She takes it with a suspicious look, raising a dark eyebrow at him. This feels dangerously close to pity. 

“I’m sorry…About your leg…” he looks away again, scratching at the side of his nose. He looks guilty, as though he means it. Azula sobers, turning the halved apple between her palms. 

“I wouldn’t have showed you any mercy.” 

“Huh…” The sound is akin to a laugh. “Yeah I guess not.”

Zuko reaches over, rubbing his hand against the top of her head. Azula jumps, smacking his hand away indignantly. She opens her mouth, ready to unleash the harshest insult she can think of, but Zuko has stood once more, stepping lightly back over to his bed roll before she can effect her verbal assault. 

Their uncle’s snores cease, and the old man rolls over in his bedding, mumbling in his sleep. 

She leans back into the wall she’s propped herself against, pouting. She takes a large bite of the apple, the flesh sweet and juicy on her tongue. 

 

 


End file.
